Topic: Introduction Thread: New users, please post here!

[Morgul]

Well, I see that we have a bunch of new people who've joined. However, most haven't posted yet, so to break the ice, I figured I'd make a Introduction thread, so new users can introduce themselves, and possibly even tell us where they heard about the site, what they think, and somehting about themselves.

Me, I'm the story behind the game, and the guy who's trying to hold it all together... not that I mind. It's fun, and the kind of thing I'm good at. I'm pretty friendly, and I like answering questions, so please, feel free to ask.

Welcome to the forums, and please, remember that we want to hear from everyone! Please, post! :-D

--Chris

[contingencyplan]

I'll follow up with a little bit about myself.

I'm Contingencyplan, or Brian for those who know me.  I'm a student at a college here in Texas, studying Computer Science.  I love the subject so much I'm planning to get my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in it.  I'm also toying with the idea of getting an MBA afterwards, though I haven't decided.

I spend almost all of my time in front of a computer, either playing games or working on Precursors.  I joined onto the Precursors dev team as a programmer not too long ago, and have been enjoying myself ever since.

Personally, I'm more an ivory-tower theorist than a practician - I prefer to deal with things on an abstract level, and leave others to the details of how to actually make it work in the current system.  However, I also enjoy programming and turning my ideals into actual code.

I want to second morgul's welcome to the forums - everybody come and post your ideas about the game.  We want to hear from you!
~Brian

[topher]

Hi, another Chris here!  I came across the site while starting to do research into my own space MMORPG idea.  A lot of the things i had brained stormed are the same things that are planned here.  So I emailed the other Chris, we'll just call him C1, and he said post here.

So about me...

I'm a 26 year old software developer for a Fortune 500 phone/isp company in the US (going on almost 5 years).  I am completely self-taught in php, java, c, perl, mysql, oracle, networking, and all of the fun isp related technologies.  The only thing longer then my resume is the list of geek related items on my list.  The list includes, d&d, larp, everquest, dark ages of camelot, anarchy online, world of warcraft, eve online, everquest 2, and a probably more then i am forgetting.  Some of my favorite games of all times are Privateer 2 and the Wing Commander series...getting back to those roots would be a dream come true.

I'd like to join the dev team and see what i can learn of C++, Crystal 3d, and all of the other fun tools.  Even if that doesnt work i'd like to join in some other facate (web integration, day-to-day web tools, etc.).  Ok, i've rambled enough..time to go download the alpha version and play a bit.  Hope to see you all around on the boards and irc.

Peace !

Chris (topher)

[contingencyplan]

Dangit, now we got Chris1 and Chris2...  Now how am I going to keep them straight? ;-)

Seriously, glad to meet you.  morgul forwarded us (whitelynx and myself) your email - your resume sounds impressive, to say the least.

Personally, I'd like to see some of the work you've done, especially code-wise (assuming you can do so legally - i.e., not under a NDA or something of that sort).  

Something that I think we'd find quite useful is your experience with networking, presumably with networking programming included in that.  We're looking at using RakNet for our networking, and we'd definitely appreciate someone who could do some work on that for us.  Personally, I know nothing about networking, so someone who works in that field for a living would certainly be useful.

Also, if I may ask - what education have you received? I'm just curious - we're all in college, so it'd be interesting to work with someone who's in the field already, to see the difference in outlook and such.  If that makes a lick of sense. :-P

Anyways, glad to meet you!
~Brian

[topher]

No education past high school.  It was all self taught and just keeps going from there.  I've always been the youngest developer at the places i work because i got a 4 year head start =)

I've done networking in perl, php, and java language wise but understand network from a concept and implementation level.  I took a look at the Rakkarsoft stuff and it has good docs and looks clean from their tutorials and examples.

topher

[ShadowFlame]

Hey, my name is ShadowFlame, or Dan if you will. I'm mcrobotics' (or Mike's) younger brother.

First of all, you guys are incredible. I could never know half of the stuff you guys know about programming. Despite being the programmer for my FIRST team the last 2 years, that doesn't mean I'm very good at it :P

Ok, so now for what I am here for. First of all, I'll be happy to comment on and make suggestions on the game and aspects of it. The main reason I would like to get involved, however, is that I have this natural knack for music, and I am interested in writing music for this game. Maybe you guys have music already selected, or maybe music has already been thought out. I searched the forums and didn't find anything about music though, so even if it is early in development, I'd like to offer my services in music!! I have Guitar Pro 4 and a few other programs, although that just makes stuff in Midi format (however I can string stuff together in another program and create mp3's), so there might be brainstorming involved in getting the music created and played in higher quality.

My main instrument of choice is percussion, but don't let that fool you, I don't just hit things, I can create music :P I'm happy to be of service in whatever way I can!!

[Chii]

I'm Ericka Yohe, girlfriend of the freak that started this whole thing (I love you hunny). From that I'd think it'd be obvious where I heard about the game.....some days I wish I would stop hearing about the game.

But seriously, I'm here to support Chris and do what I can despite not having one shred of a clue about anything computers or cs. I do however read a lot of fantasy and even write a little so I help out with the story a lot and have just started some work on creating star systems. If you need an outsiders view on things, I'm your girl. Or if you need something to look pretty....damn guys  

[BigDan]

Hi Im Dan , I'v known Chris (Morgul) for quite a few years and he and my oldest son have been friends for just as many. :P

I'm 42 and live in Norwich NY, I'v loved disusing the planing of the book with chris and helping with editing as he went when he was here. :shock:

We planed out the makeup of the game over and over so many times I feal like part of my soul is inbeded into it. :-/

I'm a big Game lover and cant get enough of RPG and action games and when I see what you guys are doing I start salivating at the thought of actualy being able to play the game.

I work as an Appliance Repair Technition, Have been Maried for 22 years, have 3 kids, Dan(20), Stephanie(19), and Brian(16). 8)

I'v loved discussing Phyics and spacial thiery with Chris on many ocaisions and have alot of my own ideas but we woun't go into that. :idea:

In fact we even went as far as building a working magnetic pump using a sailine sulition as the medium , and I still have it!

The biggest thing about me I think you will find is that Im a dreamer and can envision many things within this universe and even beyond, I'll try to keep most of my Ideas as realistic as posable, but dont be shocked if I come up with some real dusies.

[Rosencrantz]

Hi! My name is Ryan and I ran across this game on the happypenguin.org site. It was rather fortuitous because I had been having ideas about developing something similar to this (i.e. a sci-fi setting with rts/fps and space flight components) but my main stopping point has been designing and programming graphics. I know a little bit of OpenGL, but not enough to do anything remotely fancy.  I'm mostly self taught in C and C++, although I've taken a couple classes to improve what I've already learned.  One of my main interests is in computational physics, so I find some of the stuff that you're trying to implement very interesting.  I've got a B.S. in Physics and a B.S. in Mathematics, and I'm currently employed as a datacenter technician for a hosting company.  I'll post more ideas as I have them.

[fehknt]

Hey, I'm fehknt/Devin, and I met chris and dave in class (college), then at the computer shop i work at, and there they gave me this web address.  Ever since then, I've tried to voice my opinions on every topic that gets brought up... sometimes I regretted it afterwords, because I gave some kinda stupid ideas, but then again, that's what this place is for -- sounding out ideas to see if they'll work.  I may become a dev in the future, but at this point, i'm just a "power user".  Oh yeah -- Physics and Computer Science double major, Junior.

[contingencyplan]

Physics + CS... ouch. Just judging by the Physics department here, at least... :-(  (good teachers, hard tests...)

Anyways, blessings on your studies! Glad to hear your ideas, too.

And to everyone, like fehknt said, this place is for sounding off ideas - don't worry about appearing foolish (of course exercise some common sense - post something beyond "the game sucks. the end.").

~Brian

[Shadowics]

Dangit, now we got Chris1 and Chris2...  Now how am I going to keep them straight? ;-)

Who are you talking about... Case?

Anyway, Hello everybody. I'm Shadowics, or just Shadow, and I knew Case (aka Morgul) from High School.

Right now, I'm a Student of Software Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Apparently, the Case thinks I have some interesting ideas for the game, which I'll be posting over in development in a little bit, in the mean time, I'll tell you a bit about myself.

I'm 19, single, and spend most of my time sitting in front of my computer, either programming, playing games, or both at once. My computer, incidentally, is a laptop which goes just about everywhere with me. I've even been known to sleep with it on occasion.

For writing code, I prefer Java right now, though conceptually all programming languages are rather simliar; so I'll try to help out with out getting my hands dirty mucking around in C.

Also, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so my code would tend to be more on the ambitious side anyway...

Well, that's about all about me, talk to you all later.

[Brandano]

Hello, I am Brandano, I do things. Actually, My name IRL is Alessandro Garosi, and I mainly do low poly models. I have been long a member of The Diuturnal Order (http://www.diuturnal.com), an XvT squadron, and for a while we topped the ranks of the european sqwuadrons. But the games evolved, XvT was forgotten and my beloved tight dogfights have disappeared. I set out with the idea of making a small dogfighting game with CrystalSpace and Python, but I intercepted Morgul on the CrystalSpace IRC channels and gatecrashed the party . I can't offer much commitment, I lead 6 or 7 lives already, but let's see where we can get, ok? I can also program in a few languages like Java or Python and a little C-C++, and I coded a Blender Netimmerse (Morrowind) importer, you can get it on the Yahoo NIFLA  group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/NIFLA/) . But I don't have much experience with the sort of realtime stuff used in games, so I'll leave the programming to the experts

[Watercolor Wolf]

Hey Everyone, my name is Cory, and I'm one of the developers of Precursors.  My gig is mostly with art, design, and critical anaylasis.  I'm currently working on a lot of the ship, race and cultural visual concepts of the game.  I'm currently an illustration student at SUNY Fredonia, and I've had some of my work published.  I've also got my work on Deviant Art (http://galfmizal.deviantart.com/)  just in case you want some examples to look at until I get my current work projects finished and Chris scans them.  I've got a lot of hobbies, most of which include pen and paper gaming for over 13 years.  I hope that my concepts of Role playing will help shape Chris's ideas for an interactive and fun experience in Precursors.

[Dewbacca]

Hello, Dewy here. I was feeling old until I read BigDan's warm welcome. I'm only 38 hahaha... with a wife and 2 kids, so well met all.

My background is more from the playerside of games with a lot of Doom2, and XvT... all the way back to Elite on my old Commadore 64. I am a big fan of Stratagy games like Civ, BotF, Rebellion and such. But my most extensive gaming / Programming has been taking my years of experience as a Dungeon master in AD&D, and applying it towards the mMorpg ultima online and its Free Emulator community. Some limited success, but I didn't really expect a lot of response as I was just learning and experimenting.

I ran across this project mentioned in the CrystalSpace forums and see it has some wonderful concepts that I was also envisioning. Mmorpg is the future of gaming, and I believe it has not been done well to date in the sci-fi genre.

I will be honest though, this is different from my concept in many ways (although I still have much to read about it) and do not know how much support I can offer and still persue my own vision. I certainly do not want to distract from this project and will attempt to provide applicable suggestions that are constructive.

I do commend this team and their efforts, and will drop in from time to time and see if I can be of any assistance.

Good luck, and Godspeed.

[Dawn]

[contingencyplan]

Good to see you on here (finally! ). Already, thank y'all so much for the assistance y'all have given us through Dawnet - very much appreciated.

You were talking to me earlier about working on the server and networking side of the game. You'll want to get in touch with whitelynx about that - he's the one working on it currently. We have a commercial licence from Rakkarsoft (http://www.rakkarsoft.com/) for their RakNet networking library. Take a look at that if you're interested in programming on it.

Anyways, glad to see you on here! Let the other GoRCs know they're more than welcome over here too.

[Morgul]

Good to see you on here (finally! ). Already, thank y'all so much for the assistance y'all have given us through Dawnet - very much appreciated. [...] Anyways, glad to see you on here! Let the other GoRCs know they're more than welcome over here too.

I second all that!!! :-D

[Neo]

Neo

I am: A GoRC h3ad (leader), An HTML prgramer for www.dawnet.net, a nice guy, The One, ready to play on dialup.

I am not: A girl (man that'd be cool), Your mom, Your dad, Your cousin, Your Aunt, Your uncle, Either of Your Grandparents, or of any relation to you.

~Neo

[PieceMaker]

Sup. My name is Jonathan Adams. I am a homeshooler and love it. I am currently a GoRC, but am switching to GN:EF where I will be a sub-commander. I dabble here and there in computers but don't spend a lot of time working on them because my mom, yes, I still listen to my mom, doesn't like me to do a lot of things like that, although I am making her a website. I look forward to getting to know you guys.