MuskTrumpxiety

What an HORRIBLE week!
The MuskTrumpxiety is hitting hard, and I don’t even live in the US.
I guess that’s what happens when fascists are in charge of one of the most powerful countries in the world. I hope you are all safe, wherever you are.

Clearing socials

I’ve always kept my distance from social media. I have a LinkedIn account (asleep when I’m not job hunting), as well as Reddit and Bluesky accounts. I do use WhatsApp, but since Zuckerbro has pledged allegiance to the Trumpsks, I’m moving away from it.
It is a slow and hard process: You need to ask all your contacts to move to something else—Signal in this case—and people don’t want to install yet another messaging app. Still, I’m already facing the final boss: migrating the family group chat. Classic text messages will do for everyone else.
Wish me luck!

Engine progress

In other news, I spent 3 days figuring out why my engine wouldn’t render the .bsp map I had loaded. It was so frustrating, and as always, the issue turned out to be a dumb mistake. Working alone on something can be hard when you’re stuck and need a fresh perspective… But it’s all working now, so I’ll celebrate by taking a break!
Next week, I’ll work on adding textures.

I can already feel some friction in the new texture workflow: adding them to Hammer++ requires converting my .png files to .vtf format and generating a .vmf material file. It also means my engine will have to support .vtf and .vmf files. Alternatively, I could switch to Trenchbroom + ericw-tools with flat .png textures, which might be enough to achieve the look I’m after.
That’s a decision for next-week me.

Well, that was my week. Here’s hoping yours went smoother!
See you next time.