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23-25th June 2000

The third TEP meet can be summed up in one word: Quake.

Various bits of old machines, dodgy monitors and my TV were commandeered into a Quake network.

I think we discussed some stuff too, by memory's a little hazy on that one.

A TEPSocial rather than a TEPMeet perhaps. Hey, even if there is no game, we all enjoyed the ride.

From left to right, Kim Bruning, Henry Segerman, John Jordan, Tom Ford/Ben Motz.

Sometime December 1999

I vaguely remember another TEP Meet in December 2000, again in Oxford.

Henry Segerman from the Galileo project turned up with a cool bike and some juggling balls. Kim convinced us that his vision for FORs was, in fact, quite good. Much to Chris' annoyance we watched anime whilst he was coding :).

Here's Chris' report:

TEP MEET SPECTACULAR SUCCESS

Lady and Gentlemen.

After some very late nights, burgers, dropped sausages and distinctly dodgy lemonade/floor cleaner, the Tep meet survivors emerged blinking into the Sunday sunshine (well, clouds) after a highly successful Tep meet. At least, I got home alright. Everybody else make it? :)

The meet was characterised by talking I guess. Lots and lots of discussion on a large array of subjects (Physics, AI, Physics and AI, Graphics, AI, Anime, er, Physics) took place. I say 'discussion', but judging from the following random quotes, I'm not sure if that's the best definition...

• "You can't possibly want to do that" (Flend)
• "Youcancancancancancancancancan" (Kim)
• "You must be joking" (John, several times on varying subjects)
• "No/That won't work at all/That completely breaks everything" (Kim)
• "That's great, but can't we just do it my way?" (Chris, to Kim about the AI)
• "The reason I can't code this properly is because I don't understand it at all..." (Chris, on the AI)
• "That's pretty sick... but I've done worse. That's only triple deferencing..." (John, looking at some of Chris' code)
• "I can't believe it's after midnight" (Henry)
• "What's with the hand signals?" (Flend)
• "You never seem to agree on anything" (Chris)
• "Ha ha ha ha ho ho ho ho" (Chris, when Kim suggested a particular idea)
• "Ha ha ha ha ho ho ho ho" (When John heard about above idea)
• "I haven't a clue what you're talking about" (Chris, being slow, many many many times)
• "There seems to be a palpable sense of Evil here..." (John's computer on startup)
• "I don't function well at three in the morning" (Henry)
• "You mean we don't need this thing I just spent an hour and a half coding?" (Chris)
• "Let's watch Anime" (Kim)
• "It's quite artistic, but I can't code while it's on...please turn it off" (Chris, concerning Anime)
• "Let's watch Anime" (Kim)
• "John and I would really appreciate a cup of tea, if you're not doing anything..." (Chris, to Flend, joking, but still wanting the tea :)
• ...and, the most shocking...
  
  "We don't have any coffee. Nobody actually drinks coffee in this house." (Flend)

In all, much shouting was done (all good-natured of course), and there was much intellectual sparring to be had by all. Much continuous physics theorising (and juggling) was done by Henry, much gui integrating was done by Flend (update your CVS to get the latest gui). John wrote and I tested new non-RHIDE makefiles, and you can now compile tep for different platforms in the same directory. If you really feel the need, that is :) All on CVS.

We wrote the real basics of a test physics engine (currently sitting on John and my hard drives, and not publically released yet). I might put this on CVS if there's some interest, and if John hasn't modified it too much in the meantime (John?). Kim had some ideas on continuous Frames of Reference, which might actually be possible to implement - we'll see.

I wrote and compiled a basic AI scheduler in around three hours, way beyond the expected one, and wrote some classes for the basic behaviours. Hopefully (when I get time to finish and test it), we can have some behaviours being scheduled, all ready to be overidden by you folks...! Kim produced the wackiest AI ideas yet heard by man :), on several different subjects, yet stood his ground and converted many of us to his thinking.

John showed us the new TepGraph (number three, I believe) which did some very nice per-pixel alpha blending in software (requires MMX to look good). He also attempted to integrate this with TEP, which he's still doing.

Flend uploaded the latest GUI, complete with scrolling tables, and acted as the musical maestro (can I have that guitar mod? that was really cool) He also recompiled his linux kernel several times a day, in a vain attempt to make his PC map drives onto my PC. This never worked.

All in all, wouldn't have missed it, and I have much more impetus to code. Get the latest CVS, and start coding. There never was a better time.

Anyone for lemonade?

Unfortunately, it looks like that was the last TEP meet Chris will attend (sob) due to him landing some cushy games programming job somewhere. I'm sure everyone on the team wishes him luck with this and his future endeavours! :)

14-15th July 1999

The first TEPMeet took place in Oxford, UK and was attended by four of the team.

As well as crushing some major bugs we went to see Star Wars I and irritated my housemate who ended up spending the night sleeping rough in a College TV room.

From left to right, Kim Bruning, Chris Parsons, John Jordan

(I don't know what happened to the photo but rest assured that is not dandruff to the right of John's head!).