Who

I picked up the handle "0ctane" many years ago while playing Quake 2. The name came partly from being a biochemist and partly from using an SGI Octane computer. To put a pseudo-hacker (a.k.a. nerd) edge to the name, it is spelled with a leading zero. Some forums and what-not do not like a leading zero, so I occasionally go by n0nane.

2007-05-10

I have decided to do something "good". I have joined the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. What does this mean? It means I will be 1) asking people to make donations to the society, and 2) competing in a triathlon in September. Why am I doing this? Well, in the past I competed in a triathlon and duathlon, and they are actually quite fun. More importantly, I believe in the mission of the L&LS. The funds raised help support research intended to combat numerous blood diseases. How can you help? Pleae contribute to my fundraising campaign. My fundraising page is here.

2006-12-09

After my last rant, I need to give props to the "good" EL players. While I will not mention many names, there have been a few outstanding citizens...especially the early testers like Atlantis and gizz. Recently I had a pleasant conversation online with a (new to me) Mac user, who pointed out that there are bugs when playing under OS 10.5. Another user requested some non-standard features (e.g. NOTEBOOK). Feedback is good. Positive feedback is better, since it influences my decision to continue working on the game.

There will be a game update sometime soon which will include preliminary special effects. Woohoo! See you soon. ;)

2006-10-21

So, I have been spending my free time (that is, time away from work and Madeline) writing the special effects code for Eternal Lands. It required a couple rewrites, as I was not originally happy with how I implemented it. Anyhow, I think it is in pretty good shape. Some people have already started making their own effects for inclusion, which is a good thing since I only have a little SFX experience. I commit changes to CVS pretty frequently, so check out the new code and effects.

On another EL note, I have noticed something peculiar about the people who download my Macintosh client for the game. Here is a quote from my chatlog:

[PM from richest: who are you your are in my readme]

First, ignoring the grammar and punctuation errors....amazingly someone actually read the README_osx.txt file that I distribute with the game! Secondly, I wonder if someone has linked to my downloadable file. I mean, is it too hard to figure out that my signature in the readme, 0ctane, is related to my player name in EL, 0ctane, and is somehow related to the game obtained from www.0ctane.net? A few months ago there was a particularly rude player, Hae, who did not make this connection. Another game developer and I were trying to fix an endian-related problem with the Mac client:

[22:02:43] [PM to Hae: are you running windows, linux, or macintosh OS X?]
[22:03:07] [PM from Hae: Mac]
[22:03:31] [PM to Hae: okay, which version of the client are you using?]
[22:03:42] [PM from Hae: oops,I mean,Linux]
[22:04:02] [PM from Hae: 2,000,000,000,now stop bothering me]
[22:04:51] [PM to Hae: okay, that helps. I am a developer and we are trying to trace a problem in the client. Play nice.]
[22:05:12] [PM to Learner: Hae said he is running Linux...not the most polite person.]
[22:05:48] [PM from Learner: strange]
...more conversation with Learner here...
[22:11:32] [PM to Hae: are you using Intel or Mac hardware?]
[22:11:49] [PM from Hae: I said don't bother me!]
[22:12:01] [PM from Hae: One more time and I'm reporting you!]
...more conversation with Learner...we determine that he thinks I am a hacker...

This is a free game people. Have you donated any money to my development efforts? No. If you want to be able to use it on a Mac for free, I request a little respect.

2006-07-03

Updated Eternal Lands client.

2006-04-19

Finally linked up my photo gallery on the top menubar. Also made the gallery themed similar to the rest of the site. Not much currently accessible to the public.

2006-03-31

Made a working EL client for i386 Macs, available over in Programming. It avoids a lot of the endian problems in the PPC port since it uses the Intel chip.

2006-03-24

I have finally managed to get a site of my own. Why did it take so long? Firstly, I have been very picky about the site design. Secondly, it has been quite difficult finding a webhosting service that has the features that I am interested in. I mean, who really needs 200 e-mail addresses and 5 subdomains if all you want to do is show some pictures and host a file or two?

Over in Programming you will find my port of the EL MMORPG to Macintosh OS X.