Updates
March 2023 Update
March 1, 2023 at 7:05 am
Work at work has picked up more than expected, in addition to life stuff. Synekism work has been slow as a result.
Closest I got was to address my dire need for a better way to store my notes or personal wiki of acquired bits of random knowledge (mostly coding or gamedev related to Synekism work). I've been using a self-hosted Wikimedia site for years now but I'm slowly switching away to a pure git + Markdown approach.
Till next time!
February 2023 Update
February 1, 2023 at 8:14 am
Well, I did fix my computer's SSD, but I also spent a lot of time making sure this kind of problem wouldn't happen again. Plus the family interruptions and now work were there most of the month still. In short, not much Synekism was done.
It wasn't nothing though. I made progress on my cross-platform build system. I also did a bunch of research and experiments with VMs and containers (ie. Docker). I'm trying to fully describe my build environment in a programmatic way. On the VM side, I also learned how to set up a GPU-accelerated VM, which will come in handy.
That's it for now. My day job started the year with a bang. A lot of things at once. I don't yet know when I'll ramp back up. Hopefully not long now. Cheers!
January 2023 Update - Happy New Year!
January 1, 2023 at 1:21 pm
Well, there goes 2022. Mixed feelings but overall it's good to see it come to a close. I'm 3 weeks into my 4 weeks vacation. A lot of it was spent with family and friends so far but I hope to have the last week all for Synekism. I did manage to get back into the code in the last few days. It's been way too long. Felt good.
Of course, 2023 had to start with a bang and right before midnight I discovered my main computer's OS SSD has been massively failing for a while now. So before I restart on Synekism, I have to put out a fire first.
I'm optimistic about 2023. No real reason, but I won't question it. Let's see how it goes. Cheers!
December 2022 Update
December 1, 2022 at 9:30 am
Work continues to keep me a bit too busy. Slowly working my way out of this hole. That said, the temporary spike project using UE5 went well. I'm just about done. It was nice to learn a bit about using Unreal and Blender together. But don't worry, for or (likely) worse, Synekism is not going to Unreal. :)
I really should be resuming Synekism work after next week, once I'm on vacation and into next year. Expect a bit more meat in the next update.
What a crazy year, again.
November 2022 Update
November 1, 2022 at 8:29 am
Continued to be busy with work/life. Moved to another team at work and had to onboard, while also working on a conference talk with said conference happening today. Also busy with a short term project that got me usign UE5 for the first time (just an exploration). As such, not much to report. Hoping my extended holiday break coming up will finally get me back on Synekism.
October 2022 Update
October 1, 2022 at 2:10 pm
My day job has been sucking most of my personal time this last month. I'm preparing for a conference demo. This will last for another couple of weeks. Therefore, not much to report for now.
September 2022 Update
September 1, 2022 at 8:29 am
Another year just flew by. Synekism is now 12! Wish I had something fancy to show today but I'm still deep in the build system, trying to set up a cross-compilation pipeline. I want to be able to build all 3 platforms from the same computer and into the same output folder. Then I can upload to Steam all 3 platforms at once. This involves a lot of Bash code. Anyway, keeping on keeping on.
August 2022 Update
August 1, 2022 at 8:37 am
Building for Steam required some rather large changes to my build and automation Bash scripts, which lead me (back) to the Bash script optimization rabbit hole. Basically, I worked on Bash script cleanup this last month. The plan for August is wrap up this exploration and get back to game C++ work.
July 2022 Update
July 1, 2022 at 2:36 pm
Not much to report this month. Was on vacation and travelling for most of it. Still catching up with the day job. But I expect to have more time in July.
June 2022 Update
June 1, 2022 at 9:52 am
Highly distracted but steady work continues. Had to go back to the build system to add support for packing a version of the game and uploading it to Steam. Mostly done that. Also started incorporating the Steam Overlay into the engine, but ran unto some Vulkan problems with that.
About
Synekism is an attempt at a modern city simulator rooted in procedurally generated content. The project was started in 2010 to address some frustrations with the city simulation video game genre. It is actively developed on and currently in a purely alpha-experimental stage. Updates on the project are posted on the first of every month. Note that work on this project is more or less done by one person so progress will be slow, but steady.
The game is a sandbox where control is not explicit but indirect. The player can designate residential, commercial, industrial, and government zones and watch them grow, instead of explicitly plopping each building manually. The game tends to lean towards macro-management.
The key features of Synekism include grid less 3D environments and procedurally generated buildings. The lack of a grid results in total freedom when zoning and building roads allowing for more realistic looking cities. Procedurally generated buildings allows for more visual variability. Instead of querying a finite list of static models, a building is generated uniquely upon creation using local as well as city-wide conditions.
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