Hellgate, Dumbledore, and Smart Ptrs

Hellgate: London is shaping up to become my new favorite game of all time. I sometimes turn through lots of games trying in vain to look for "my game." I think all gamers ( I really hate that term) have a style of game or rather a collection of gameplay elements that they cherish and probably without thinking about, look for in every game they play. When a game has all those elements...well you might just see the gamer cry. Hellgate has all my favorite elements in it: action, stats, lvlin, item collection, and intense amount of cusomizability. On top of that, it has immense amount of character in its setting and crosses both sci-fi and fantasy at the same time. This game will kick more ass then ass-kicking-ologists have been able to discover.

Now onto my next topic: Dumbledore. I recently watched the new Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix Trailer and my brain started stirring upon one of the major flaws with the movie: the dude who plays Dumbledore. I immediately ran to rant to Laura who (sweetheart as she is) attempts to listen to me. After the fourth movie, I was really put off by how the actor chose to portray Dumbledore. The scene in particular that ended it for me was after Harry's name is drawn from the cup. When he goes to the room in the back of the Hall, Dumbledore runs up to him and shakes him demanding to know whether he cheated some how. For a fan of the books, this is an action that Dumbledore would have never done. Even in the Fifth book he threatens someone who even attempts to manhandle a student. While this seems like being picky, it was a huge turnoff towards the actors portrayal. With the rest of the movie, he became less friendly and more of an age-old crotchety wizard who would be more fit in Willow then Harry Potter. In an interview, he remarked that he had not read the books and he probably wouldn't. Damn.

So Smart Pointers. Well I'm not really implementing super pro smart pointers but I did just introduce a pseudo memory management system in my collision/ physics code that allows them to share ptrs to geometry and should enforce there to be no hanging pointers. I am excited to get back to the engine and get my first demo of it up and on my website. Right now the demo is shaping up to be several boxes and odd convex shapes falling and bouncing off each other in a room (in 2d).