[HAJ News - June 2007] Apologies for the lack of news

[Jed]

On behalf of the team, apologies for the lack of Ham and Jam news lately. I know a lot of people have been wondering whats been going on especially as the forums have been pretty quiet. We'd planned a small update about three weeks ago but most of us got snowed under with other things.

So what exactly is going on with Ham and Jam?

Well to be brutally honest, not a lot. As we've mentioned in previous updates we've hit a bump in the road with coding which is making it hard to go forward. Basically, the "core" of our gameplay code (the part which makes Ham and Jam what it is) is stuck in production. We have a design brief for it and planned it all out but we've reached the skills limit of our current (novice) coding team and can't make much progress. We've looked around for another couple of coders who can maybe join the team for a month just to push this part through, but so far, no-ones stepped up. For the team this is incredibly frustrating.

Because of the lack of activity from us, a few nay-sayers have cropped up saying that Ham and Jam is dead, or abandoned or just plain failed. Thats not the case, we're just suffering a skills shortage and team members have other real-life commitments that makes Ham and Jam bottom of their list of priorities. It's a universal constant just about every other mod has to deal with at some point in it's life-cycle.

Speaking personally, I have considered maybe switching engine might help us move forward. Great though Source is, the need to do most of our stuff in C++ is becoming a real pain and my eye's been drawn to more script based engines. Certainly not having to touch the codebase and just dictate the game logic in something like LUA would make life for all of us much easier.

So, at this point no progress since the last update and our search for a gameplay logic coder continues. If you know ANYONE who might be able to help us, get in touch.

[dogsbody]

Check your Private messages

[Arturo]

Thanks for the update! Hopefully you guys don't change engine good luck finding a coder.

[Jed]

Originally Posted by Arturo

Thanks for the update! Hopefully you guys don't change engine good luck finding a coder.

Well it would be a monumental pain moving to a new engine especially if we have to re-rig and export all our art assets.

As I said in the post, having to work with C++ gives you a lot of freedom to do stuff but also requires a certain ammount of skill. Personally, my C++ is ok, it's just how it all comes together in the Source codebase that's a bit beyond my grasp. Unfortunately I've not got enough free time to sit and just play with it and figure it all out which is why we're looking for someone who's implemented something similar before to help us out.

Really it's just down to entities and coding all the logic within them.

[zone trooper]

Have you tryed looking around other forums or going to FPS Banana for some coders. Maybe you could ask another mod team if they could spare you a coder. I wish I could code but I can't, I do hope that you really don't change the engine. Just keep on working hard.

[fess]

Best of luck with finding a coder, and thanks for the update

[Jed]

I've got one lead to follow up, I just haven't had the time right now what with other things. I'll see where it leads.

As I said, I could probably do it myself but I just dont have any free time at the moment

[spine]

Thats what team members are for Jed, to lend a helping hand in the grand design...

[Jed]

Well you're not much help with a baby clamped to your nipple!

[Ginger Lord]

....

I have spare time!

Finally.

Year 2 is finally over at Uni, the gf has gone back to her home for Summer and now I have some time and space for John stuff.