I really hate Maya sometimes. Maya is the 3D application I use at work and it’s got some great features, but sometimes portions of the program are so fucking stupid I want to smack the programmers upside the head.

Imagine if you wanted to draw with a pencil and paper. Conceptually simple, right?

Now imagine that every single time you set the pencil lead to the paper, your nice, sharp little pencil immediately unsharpened itself, leapt out of your hand, scampered across your desktop and took a nosedive back into the pencil box, then the pencil box scooted off the side of your desk and into your desk drawer, then quickly clambered to the very back of the drawer as it slams itself shut.

That’s what Maya is doing to me right now when I try to rig this character. All I’m trying to do is adjust the value of a single weight by entering a number like 0.5, and usually, when I hit enter to accept the change, Maya keeps that text entry field highlighted so I can type another number if I need to adjust it again immediately. But in the new and improved version of Maya, it DESELECTS the text field so that I have to take my hand off my keyboard, move my mouse cursor over to the tiny little text entry field, click on it, THEN type a new number. What used to take 1/10th of a second now takes two seconds or more, and for absolutely no reason.

What makes it worse for me is that I have a reportedly AWESOME custom script that’s supposed to make this entire process simple and intuitive, but some other obscure bug Maya has breaks the script so I can’t use it.

[UPDATE]
Oh, I found out what the problem was and how to fix it! I’m SO happy I managed to fix it… and yet, I’m SO pissed at how pointlessly stupid it is. Want to know what the problem was?

I was using the big Enter key instead of the little Enter key.

Thanks, Alias. Way to arbitrarily change the most incredibly basic input scheme that’s been in place ever since the typewriter was invented, and then not document it at all.
[/UPDATE]

Also, Maya is the only program I’ve ever used that doesn’t actually save files when I click ‘Save.’ Maya crashed on me four times in a row yesterday and I lost 20 minutes of work each time, despite the fact that I saved the file every two minutes each time. I had to set up a custom script to forcibly save the file three consecutive times every time I clicked ‘Save’ once.

BAH! Fucking annoying day.

And back with another post. I finished my fourth day at Ready At Dawn now, and I love it there. The team’s amazing, the project is even cooler than I thought, and I’m having a blast working there. Already having fun learning all the goofy little console-specific differences from PC game development. Nothing bad, nothing *that* weird, just stuff you’d find on any console. I don’t know how much I can really say about it since the PSP is still way under wraps, so I’m going to be vague about it. It’s all cool stuff though, everything I’m working on is kick-ass. Just new stuff to get used to. :)

Working in a full game dev environment is cool, too. At Liquid Development, I usually didn’t get to work on the same project as everyone else, so there was very little chance for camaraderie to develop.

Living in Huntington Beach is frigging awesome. I love the area, my apartment is obscenely huge, and I’m really happy here. Now I just need to get a car, which is proving to be a huge pain. More on that later in this post.

I found another game I like. I downloaded the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War demo and I’ve been hooked. I’m a big Real-Time Strategy nut, as well as a sci-fi nut, and this is an awesome demo. The art is great, the gameplay is fast, furious and bloody, and it’s just a lot of fun. They made a lot of clever decisions that I approved of…

One feature they have is that, instead of micromanaging individual soldiers, you manage squads as if they were a single unit. You can have 4 to 10 soldiers to a squad and equip them with a Sergeant to lead them as well as different weapons. As their health drops, they die individually, and you can add more squad members to take the place of their fallen comrades. The models and animations of all these little guys are terrific, and when you’re in battle, it looks like a REAL battle with each soldier doing something different and cool.

There’s a particular unit called a Dreadnought that’s a huge, badass mech that tears everybody up. :) He’ll march into battle, stomp over into an enemy squad, then gore a single soldier on the sharp end of one of his arms, spin him in the air and shower the ground with his blood, then toss him 50 feet away while firing a chaingun on his squadmates. It’s ridiculously cool and I love it, because that’s just one of the attacking animations he does automatically. You click, he kills.

Even the building construction is stylish and fun. You “order” buildings from an orbiting equipment station. When you click on a building site, a giant self-assembling building kit SMASHES into the ground and makes an enormous crater, sending up tons of dust. Then the building kit drills itself into the ground and robotic legs extend to assemble itself the rest of the way. It’s hliarious and awesome.

Also, when you order new units, the Barracks opens a small landing pad where a small dropship slams into from orbit, then it lowers into the building and a squad is spit out into the world. It’s just a beautiful, hilarious little touch that’s accented by a terrific array of BIG, meaty, satisfying sounds.

See, sounds are vitally important to me in a game. A good sound can really make an average game shine. I love it when any action I perform, whether in the game or in the interface, is accompanied by a very satisfying, decisive, appropriate little sound letting me know I’ve done something. Dropping a new item into my inventory in Diablo 2 is a good example. I know that the game operates the way it should and inventory items go where they should, but simply adding a good sound for it makes the game feel like it’s well-put together and functions efficiently. The Dawn of War demo succeeds at this in all respects, and I love it. Everything is just SO GOOD, and it’s ridiculously fun to play. Best demo I’ve played in FOREVER!

As soon as I can justify the funds to pick up a copy of the game, I’m going to buy it. I’d like to recommend buying from GoGamer.com because they’re a terrific place to buy games at great prices. I hate mailing lists of all kinds but I’ve signed up for their weekly mailing of new releases and prices. They never bother me with anything else, just what I want, and I’m always amazed at their prices. Even on the week of a new game’s release, you can frequently buy it for $5 – 20 below retail. The games always ship on time, in the box and in perfect working order, and to the best of my knowledge, they’ve never sold my email address to spammers. They’re definitely good people, and they’ve earned my money.

heh, no, I don’t earn money from them or anything, I just think they kick ass at what they do, and I believe that GOOD companies deserve my money.

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Okay, and now for an angry rant about how a car dealership fucked me over and stranded me 40 minutes from home.

I was checking Vehix.com last week for a Honda CR-V, which is a small sports utility vehicle. I’m looking to spend maybe $10 – 13k on a car, and I was searching for CR-Vs under $10k in my area. I got a result from a dealership about 50 miles away, but they didn’t list the price. They had a form to fill out to contact them for the price, so I did that.

The next day I heard back from them and they told me it’s a $19,000 vehicle. I told them that was more than I was willing to spend, and asked if they had anything older and around $12k. They said they had several CR-Vs in stock that are in my price range, and over a series of 4 or 5 more calls we scheduled an appointment to go look at cars on Sunday (yesterday). Since I had no transportation, the guy that was going to sell me the car drove out to pick me and my girl up and take us to the dealership.

This is where things start screwing up and I start getting angry.

After about 40 minutes we reach the dealership, and the guy that drove me there makes me wait sit down and wait for 15 minutes then ditches me. Someone else took me to look at the 2003 CR-V that’s too much for me, and I got to test drive it. It was pretty cool, but I asked him where the older models were, and he said that not only do they not have any other CR-Vs at all, they don’t carry any cars older than 2002, and even better, there aren’t any that are less than $19k. Yes, the guy on the phone lied to me to get me to go out there and buy something more expensive.

I’m a little annoyed, and I talk to the guy some more and he’s trying to convince me that financing an older, cheaper car is HARDER because of the mileage or some BS. Then he tries to press me to buy the CR-V. I tell him it’s still too much, then he presses me for an ideal price. I tell him, okay, I can put down about $2k and pay $300/mo. He tells me he’ll see what he can do.

Fast forward a bit and Dea and I are in his office. He tells me that the CR-V is actually $25k, but he’ll be a good guy and give me a discount and offer it for $19k, which is what the guy told me in the first place. He tells me he can give it to me for $579 a month. I tell him hell no, I said 300 and I meant it. Then he said he’d go talk to the boss, then went to the break room and hung out with his buddies for about 15 minutes then came back with a manager-looking type that didn’t introduce himself, was condescending and tried to get me to buy something else I didn’t want.

Fast forward a bit more and they offer it to me for $300/mo with $2k down. I tell them yet again that it’s still a lot more than I was willing to pay, but I REALLY liked it, and that I’d need a night to think about it. They continued to be condescending and dogging me for having to think about paying significantly more than I was prepared to pay, but I held firm. So he says, okay, call me tomorrow and tries to leave.

I stopped him and said, wait, they drove us out here and we need to get home, and I ask him to arrange something for me. He says “Oh… okay, I’ll get something set up for you.” So he goes and chats with his buddies for 20 minutes in plain view of us, then I get sick of waiting (we’d been there nearly 3 hours and it was already nighttime) and I asked him if he’d arranged anything yet. He looked confused, then his eyes quickly darted over to his boss, the big boss of the dealership. We lock eyes.

The big boss, this oafish Alfred Molina-looking Mafia boss wannabe says “Well, if we drive you out here, you’re SUPPOSED to buy a CAR. But you didn’t, so you have to find your OWN way home. Get a cab.”

I stared at him, stunned that he could look me in the eye and have the NERVE to say that to me, and then I leapt over the counter and stabbed him in the face with a tire gauge.

No, not really. But I wanted to.

I was furious at what a bunch of worthless sons of whores they all were and stormed out of the dealership and called my friend Chris who lives in the same apartment complex as me and gives me a ride to work, and ask him to come bail me out. He said he’d come, and we had to wait over an hour in the cold outside of this asshole car dealership.

We ended up waiting about an hour for Chris to find his way to the dealership and got home around 9pm. Today, these pricks had the nerve to email me to ask if I was still interested in buying the car. I told them “You know what? I WAS going to buy the CR-V, but not after the way I was treated at your dealership. Not a single one of you will ever see a dime from me or anyone I know. Leave me alone and never contact me again.”

Then I wrote a VERY negative feedback to Vehix.com and a very calm, reasoned and detailed email to the president of the dealership and the customer relations manager telling them what happened and that they lost my business.

So now I’m going to find all the evil dealership warning websites I can and post the name and address of these assholes’ dealership:

Board Ford
15265 East Whittier Blvd.
Whittier, CA 90603

Sales: 866.571.9843
Service: 866-571-9844
Parts: 866-571-9845
Fax: 562.943.0178

Raymond Dixon
President

And their website: www.boardford.com

If you’re anything like me and you like kicking people in the balls, but you need a good reason for it, this place is full of excellent candidates. I don’t even believe in hell, but I wish it existed so they could all burn in it.

Aaaaaaaaaaand that’s all for now. :)

Flew out from Portland yesterday. Checked out of the hotel at 11:30 and headed to the airport. Waited six hours until our flight left. We landed in Oakland and waited for an hour and a half for the connecting flight. Everything was fine so far except for all the waiting, but right as we were about to land, things began to suck. As we approached for a landing, the plane crashed and everyone died, myself included.

No, not really. There was too much fog to land, so we had to circle for an hour. Finally we tried to land again, and ten feet above the ground, our pilot aborted the landing and pulled up sharply, then we circled for another 20 minutes then flew to an airport 50 miles away. We landed an hour and a half late at the wrong airport. Then we had to wait an hour for the buses they ordered to arrive to take us to the Orange County airport. Then we had to wait half an hour for the bus driver to reappear, and another hour for the ride back to the proper airport. We were supposed to land at 10:05pm, and we ended up getting back to the airport at about 2am. Fucking great.

Anyway, things have been going better since then. We get our apartment tomorrow. We had a walk-through and it’s pretty sweet. 2bed, 1125 sq ft, nice big balcony and vaulted ceilings, etc etc. WAY nicer than my old apartment.

Also went to see the Pacific Ocean today for the first time. Ran around in it a bit with Dea and had a really good time of it. I haven’t been to that beach before, and I haven’t been to a beach at all since I was about 4. I’m only about six blocks from the beach from where I live, which is awesome!

I start work at Ready At Dawn this coming Wednesday. Really looking forward to it. Ought to be a blast. :)

That’s all I’ve got for now. Will post a link to an article I wrote soon. Really tired and still recovering from the hell-flight. More soon.