I've been kind of slacking.

Blogs do this thing where it's like... doing your dishes after a while.  It becomes a bit of a chore and if you have too many other chores in real life to do - it falls off the radar.
That's exactly what happened here.

NONE of my projects got worked last week.  I'm a bit ashamed of that, because I did at some points have time - just no energy.  February tends to do that to me, unfortunately; as does the cold.  It's an excuse, I know, but it is what it is.

Work's been tough lately; lots to pick up and learn lately.  Lots to do.  Too many outstanding projects.

Today's been a fruitful day.  I have a puppet master server running on SLES 11 SP3; it's been running for quite some time.  It precedes my tenure at this company, in truth.  So that said, it was never even remotely utilized.  So I've been slowly expanding my functionality to it.  A few little things I've discovered about puppet and SLES:

1) Zypper is not supported, like at all.  However, there are some AWESOME custom repos out there.
2) This is a command you should run pretty much immediately:
    # zypper ar --refresh http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/systemsmanagement:puppet/SLE_11_SP3 opensuse_puppet_repo
    # Hint, this will give you awesome custom SLES based repos of common puppet items, like terminus and PuppetDB.
3) Put this in your crontab, if you don't want to get your disk filled up (assuming you're using a low footprint server like we are).
    # Crontab Puppet cleanup here:
    0 3 * * 5 find /var/lib/puppet/reports/ -type f -ctime +7 | xargs -P 4 -n 20 rm -f | mail -s "Puppet Report Logs Cleaned up!" your.email@company.com
    # Yes, that will mail you a report when this is done weekly.  Verify your puppet reports folder first.
4) I'm working on a simple 'puppet master control' script.  It's going to have:

Basic functions
    1) get the current status  (service XYZ status)
    2) list current nodes (with |more)
    3) restart puppet agent
       - show status post restart
    4) restart puppetmaster
       - check if it's running via ps
    5) tail last 25 lines of puppetmaster log
    6) repair files
    7) clear the reports folder  #see cron above
    8) redo ownership:
        sudo chown -R puppet:puppet `sudo puppet config print confdir`

Good times.
This isn't for me, but rather for my co-workers, who have no idea how puppet works.
This will form a simple framework I can expand to make into a fully featured shellscript that will handle the most simplistic tasks.

But Mike, why not use theforeman?

I would, but the damn thing is a total bastard to install on SLES!

But Mike, what about SALT?

It's still in the mix, but unfortunately also hard to deploy on a mass level due to python being horrendously out of date on SLES 

Upcoming tasks this week:

So at this point I've got a few outstanding things I need to do.  I need to write more stuff for this blog, more reviews (oldpman's scifi kit, for instance), need to add a few thousand words to my "Monsters in the Cold" story, and need to work on getting feedback from a few of my proofers for Neo Monagasque Book 2.  Good news everyone!  Major plot development means no more boring nonsense.   Bad news everyone!  Someone DIES.

I should also work on my game project this week but seriously, when will I have the time?
I'm considering overhauling it or starting from scratch due to new assets being inbound.
It still works as a good learner level but at this point I have better assets to work from.

Stay tuned :)

Project Status Monday 1/4/2016

Projects projects everywhere.

Soon I'll be swamped at work, at least in the short term.  For this moment though, I have a little free time.
With that time, I find ways to keep myself productive.

Idling projects:
MWDA Game - you know the score here.  Just not on a primary burner right now.
My book - I read a piece by George RR Martin about how he hated working for deadlines and wasn't going to finish his newest book in time for the show.  Well... yeah.  I don't know if I will ever finish this book series.  That last bit of bad criticism really put me in a sour mood and I don't think I want to just jump right back to that.
Other books - Book writing feels so tedious, you know?  I guess I enjoy shorter pieces but not so short they fit in a magazine's scant 7-9 pages.  Novellas just don't sell and expanding them into novels is a boring chore.  I have enough of those as of current, thank you very much.

Active projects:
Sci-Fi game in game guru.  I've been advancing my toolkit steadily towards my goal of completing a quality low budget title.  I made my own skies and placed them on the tgcstore (available here: https://en.tgcstore.net/artist/190502 ).

They are selling well, which is a welcome surprise.

I'm waiting for the sci-fi kit coming from TGC; they have some excellent enemy characters in the kit.  The rest is pretty meh.  But the characters will be worth it.

I'm working on learning 3D modelling.  It's an experience but coming along nicely.  There's a lot to remember in blender but overall I'm surprised at how easy it is to develop organic or complex shapes.

It actually gives me a whole new perspective on model development and I will be sure to incorporate that into my reviews.

I've started putting together asset libraries (my usual first step before making a level) for the next few levels in my game.   I want the pacing of my game to be very different from other GG games.  Faster, more overwhelming is the goal.  I want it to be DIFFICULT.  Too many of these homebrew games are ridiculously simple and easy.  I want to incorporate my lessons from the Doom series into this and try to produce some interesting 'kill puzzle' challenges which will force the player to think.  A lot of these homebrew Game-Guru and FPS Creator games tend to have a very easy and simple game play style which I'm sure suits the creator.  But if you're trying to challenge gamers, you need to present them a challenge.

That's part of what I want to do.  I also need to get some 3D modelling under my belt so I can offer custom models as opposed to just more store bought stuff.

I got some new assets too, since Voodoo updated his stuff.  It gave me an idea for a later area but I need to let that stew for now.  Next stop for me is building the medlab and engineering/bridge sections.

I've got a few of my custom characters from the charactermaker done but most of them are throwaways.  Only 2-3 are worth keeping (such as the cyberknight, who came out AWESOME).

The level flow is coming together. 

Project(s) status Friday: 12/11/2015

I started this morning off with disappointment.
Got told flat out by TGC that some of my art (Note, I'm not a great artist so this isn't horribly surprising) was of insufficient quality for the store they have.  Given the level of some stuff that's on there either they are upping their standards or I just *REALLY REALLY SUCK*.

Sigh.

Well, on with the project status.  My wife, as many may or may not know, is pregnant.  So we're anxiously awaiting our new addition in a few months.  It takes up a lot of my time.

What time I do have is spent at work, with the kid, doing housework, or very infrequently - playing games.

Every monday I sit with my 5 year old (Soon to be 6) and do some game-guru 'daddy time'.

Anyways... today I wanted to have an update ready but turns out someone posted some 'free weapons' that were blatant plagiarism and as such kind of mucked up my ideas for today's review post.  I may do a different one later, but not right now.  It frustrates me to be stymied like that.



Current project status:

1) NMC Book 2 - still waiting for beta readers to get back to me.
2) Javascript Mechwarrior Dark Age game.  No further progress (currently no desire)
3) Yet to be named "sci-fi" FPS game - good progress!  Figured out and corrected internal shadow systems, can now proceed normally.  Looks like I'll be getting a free scientist model from one 'henry weaver' and that will help CONSIDERABLY with some of the efforts I'm moving forward with.  Combined with the lackluster character creator (though I've done some interesting things with the face mapping) I have a bare bones set of 'original' characters plus some bad guys.  Now comes level design, then population of levels, then scripting, object placement for pickup objects, tuning, refinement, etc.
4) The doom analysis is complete for Doom 1.  Interesting stuff in previous blog posts  here here and here!
5) I promised to look at zombie AI code but someone already found the issue - so that's off the list.
6) I need to take more screen shots of my WIP.


At work, I'm writing a script to use puppet to deploy salt-minion on SLES SP3/4.  Irony level rising.

Project(s) status Friday 12/4/2015

I'm  resolved to try and keep up on my projects for once, instead of letting them languish.  Part of that is being open and honest with my few regular readers about where I'm at:

1. The Mechwarrior: Dark Age JS game has stalled.  This is because of inherent limitations in Javascript.  The most recent thing I did was build a shellscript which parses the DB @ www.warrenborn.com and builds a JSON for the various expansion packs.  That was done about a month ago.  The question then becomes - what engine do I want to move forward with? Easiest would probably be Unity, since it's got javascript as an optional scripting method.  On a plus note the basic combat engine for one on one combat works like a champ, including statuses like pulse lasers, flamers, etc. 
2. My Sci-Fi trilogy (book 2) is being reviewed by my proofreaders.  I'm fifteen thousand words and about 8 segments short of where it needs to be before it's a first draft.  So I'm waiting for their reviews so I can get an idea of how to fill out those missing pieces.
3. My Sci-Fi game (unnamed as of current) is stalled because of life; I am trying to work on it from time to time but it's hard when your job and home life take up 95% of your time.  Current issues are interior shadows in the Game-Guru engine and asset/story choices need firmed up.

In life, I'm a Linux Systems Engineer and Lead Linux Administrator.  I'm currently working on deploying SALTstack to SLES 11 sp4.  I've got most of the elements in place and a functional system running but boy howdy was it ugly to get moving.  You'd think something called (S)use (A)dvanced (L)inux (T)echnologies would be more compatible with (S)use (L)inux (E)nterprise (S)ystem.

I may write up a blog post on it.  Currently I am sticking with puppet for minor tasks despite it's raw incompatibility with Suse's package management system.  It's decent enough at user removal/etc though.  SALTstack however has the benefit of direct 'zypper' package management integration which is pretty sweet considering it's the backbone of how Suse manages packages.  So that's also been taking up my mental CPU cycles. 

One upshot from a gamedev standpoint is I learned how to make functional alpha channel decals work in Game Guru.  This gives me at least one solid tool to work with.  After that I want to work on doing skyboxes, because frankly I find most of the ones on the store are too repetitive or boring for my tastes.