Excel as a Database?

Normally I don't pass stuff like this on, but this one still kills me every time. And if you're reading my blog you've probably heard at least one conversation like this.

Rory - Neopoleon: Excel as a Database

On Farming

About a year ago I took a look at Pyro, aka Python Remote Objects. It's an extension package that lets you define code on one machine, and essentially run that code remotely on another machine.

The cool bit is how it hides all the socket and TCP/IP baloney under the hood. It handles connects, disconnects, name lookups, all that. Harnessing something powerful and not needing to understand the gory details is always something I appreciate daily as a Tech Artist. Part of me wants to learn all the inner workings someday. But seriously, I'll probably live a full life and never know.

Anyway, my first Pyro tool was a simple client/server batching utility. A server script would keep track of the slave machines connected and a little job queue, and assign the jobs as slaves became available. I didn't have time to make a GUI for it, but it worked. DOS commands or Python script jobs could be dished out to remote machines and it took very little code to do it. Then I got busy at work again and put the tool aside.

So one of the many GDC 2008 lectures I wasn't able to attend was Life on the Bungie Farm: Fun Things to Do with 180 Servers by Luis Villegas and Sean Shypula (lecture slides). It outlined a system used at Bungie to slave-out time-consuming or annoying processing tasks to a big set of rack-mounted PCs. It could do lighting processing for level artists, regular game builds and verification, whatever.

My first thought was "DO WANT". My next thought was, my little slave tool could make a great start for something much bigger and better. I've done nothing notable on it yet, but I've been turning over details in my head, and hope to find time to expand on it soon.

And to Luis and Sean, thanks for sharing!

GDC wrap-up

GDC 2008 was quite a trip. The two lectures I gave appeared to go extremely well. High attendance and lots of great questions, reactions. Thanks to everyone that took the time to attend, we really appreciated it!

I've posted our slides on the Volition GDC Archive, along with the promised Python Example Files (zipfile) from my Python for Technical Artists lecture. If you're a TA and enjoy scripting, definitely download them, pick 'em apart and do something cool with them.

I wish I'd been able to attend more sessions myself, but between meetings and lecture prep I never hit as many as I'd like.

GDC 2008 coming

I'm in a mad rush to complete my two lectures for the 2008 Game Developers Conference. Every three years or so I forget how hard these are and submit another proposal. What possessed me to do two this year I'll never know.

This year I'm doing one called Python for Technical Artists and another, Internal and Outsourcer Management of Tools and Pipelines. Yeah, that one's a mouthful. Fortunately I'm splitting the second one with TA co-worker of mine, so I can blame him.

I actually feel fairly well-prepared this year. The material is also a lot of fun, which makes all the difference, I think.

First

After a few seconds of intense analysis, I concluded the world needs exactly one more blog. I doubt I'll post to this much, but I hope what I do post will be useful or interesting to some. I'll try not to impress you with details on the great burrito place I found during lunch, why I think X or Y sucks, or post mildly amusing YouTube links. This blog is focused on technical art for videogame development. Hope you dig it.