About Me

Projects

Outside my house:

So about that whole camera thing...
Well, it was up for awhile. I've turned it off for now though, for a couple reasons. First, I'd had it on my primary machine for awhile, but found it was actually generating some big nasty lag spikes when some other games were running at the same time. A second computer would be the answer then, and I'd do that, but... I've actually got those off at the moment for a variety of reasons. Some day!

5/3/10 @ 11:03 PM Eastern

The Camera is back! (Again!)
I've got the camera up and running again. Happy Holidays all!

12/21/09 @ 12:17 AM Eastern

Left 4 Dead - Survivor Upgrades
So, a couple weeks ago, I joined a random (versus) game of Left 4 Dead, and what did I see? Laser sights on the survivors weapons! Neat! Playing some more, I found out that there were a whole bunch of upgrades available, and some research on the net led me to find that these 14 upgrades (survivors only) were a part of Left 4 Dead that was disabled. Someone had created a mod (for Linux dedicated servers only) that allowed players to get the upgrades.

Well, I wanted to know more, and see more done with them. Being limited to Linux, and not really having any gameplay balance, the mod wasn't going to get much serious attention, and so I decided to see what I could do. This led me on a path of learning about SourceMod and how to write plugin mods for it. After figuring out function signatures (an interesting topic on its own!) to use the upgrade methods on Windows, I went and created a plugin that makes the upgrades a part of the game.

Survivors get upgrades at the start of a level, and from events tied to the tank and witch special infected. Highly configurable, the mod allows server admins to balance just how much additional power the survivors get. It's quite a bit of fun, in my opinion, and been interesting to work on.

Other interesting programming now calls me away from much further work on this, but if you're looking for a copy of it, here you go: Survivor_Upgrades.sp

6/30/09 @ 8:45 PM Eastern

Welcome to Maryland!
I've moved to Hunt Valley, MD, for a new job at ZeniMax Online Studios. Just getting everything setup now, more updates to come. :)

3/15/09 @ 1:17 PM Eastern

The camera is back!
If you look at the left side of the screen, you'll see that the web cam is now back and updating with pictures again. Of course, it's no longer "Outside my apartment" but instead "Outside my house" but it's basically the same thing, revived after a long time... The picture that's been up there was from when I lived in Plano, TX. Since then, I've been to Austin, TX, Carlsbad, CA, Los Angeles, CA before my current location of Phoenix, AZ. What it's pointing at may change as I mess with the best place to put it, right now it's looking out into the back at the spa.

7/31/08 @ 10:52 PM Pacific

Arizona is great!
Since I was finally updating this page after so many months, I thought I'd write up a few comments about where I live now. I really like it here in Arizona. I'm in Gilbert, east-south-east of the center of Phoenix. I've got a nice 3 bedroom house with a pool in the backyard. It's not too crowded, there's a big (1 mile by 1 mile) corn field just to the south. Prices are reasonable, and there's a decent selection of nice places to go for dining. Sure, it's hot during the day in the summer, but what they say about it being a "dry heat" is really true. It's hot, but more comfortable than when I was living in the Orlando, FL area where the lower temp but extreme humidity made things really uncomfortable. Arizona really is a great place to live. :)

6/21/08 @ 10:22 AM Mountain Standard

Xbox 360 and the Red Ring of Death
Lucky me. A couple weeks back, I was playing some Rock Band on my Xbox 360, when suddenly, mid-song, my console locked up. Restarting it resulted in the dreaded red ring of death. I tried letting it cool, and such which would bring it back for a minute or two, but always brought another lock up. So I went online, and through the Xbox support website, setup a repair. Unlike EA and the Rock Band equipment, there's no option for putting a hold on your credit card and sending you a replacement immediately. Your only option is to wait for them to send you a shipping container & label, ship it to them, and then they'll ship a replacement back. All this is via the relatively slow UPS Ground as well, so each shipment takes about 5 days.

Well, finally, after weeks of waiting, I got my new console yesterday. I hooked it up, and things seemed to work. So I went through the process of redownloading all (74!) pieces of downloadable content, and then purchased and downloaded all the Rock Band content that had been released (14 songs) since my console had died. Played through three songs, and stopped, planning to play the rest today. I started this morning, played one song to completion, and then started another, "Afterlife". Well, it seems like the console took this a bit too literally, as it's gone there as well. A crash followed by the same red ring of death (2nd quadrant (upper right), for those curious).

So it's back to the 360 web site, and form to request service. However, this time, submitting the form results in a wonderful page that says "Error". Nothing about what's wrong, just error... Reloading one of the earlier pages shows I have no request for service in, so, I decide to go use the phone support instead. Once making it through the overly cheery menu system, I get to a phone rep. Amusingly, he refuses to recognize the term "Red Ring of Death" making me describe it more generally. Then following the script, I have to go back downstairs and actually demonstrate this for him, and then again with the 360 plugged directly into the wall instead of a surge protector. Finally, once all this is done, he says he's decided to grant me another repair. What? There was another possibility? Whatever, as long as I'm getting my repair. However, I'm not getting it yet... They're "upgrading" their system, and while he was able to see the two repair requests I tried to enter through the website and remove them, he wasn't able to add a new one. Meaning I get to call again in "24 hours" to ask them to actually enter the repair he approved into their system...

It's just a very frustrating situation. I'm sure I'm not alone - when I brought the box with my old console into a tiny local UPS store, they actually knew exactly what it was from the look / shape of the box. Turns out they get about a dozen of them per week. In one tiny little store.

Oh well. I guess I won't have to worry about not having new Rock Band content for awhile... 10 new songs still on my hard drive, plus everything coming out while the second repair takes place (which includes a new album on Tuesday)... Whenever I finally get it back, I should have plenty of new songs to play...

6/21/08 @ 10:14 AM Mountain Standard

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment and Arizona
So... I've changed jobs! I'm now working at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment in Arizona. The project I'm working on is the Stargate Worlds MMO, and it's a really neat game that, well, sadly, I can't say anything about yet. I hadn't watched much Stargate before interviewing and taking the position, but I'm going through the entire series right now and I just finished watching season 6, episode 4. It's really a great show. I've recognized 8-10 episodes so far, so most of it's new to me.

As for Arizona, when I first arrived, it was a bit warm, but it's cooled off nicely now, and it's really great weather now. The cost of living here in the Phoenix (Gilbert, to be exact) area is much, much lower too. So much so that instead of an apartment, I'm now living in a house. A homeowner... I guess it was going to happen someday.

Guitar Hero 3 comes out on Sunday. I'm really looking forward to it. I've only watched a few videos so far, but I like what I see. The Devil Went Down To Georgia and Through the Fire and the Flames are probably the two songs I've most wanted to see in Guitar Hero, and it's got them both. It's going to be lots of fun. :) That's it for now, hopefully I'll be updating this a bit more frequently now, and maybe I'll finally reactivate the web cam. (Though I guess I need to update the caption now too... :) )

10/22/07 @ 10:29 PM Mountain Standard

Guitar Hero 2 Challenge @ Work
I had a ton of fun last night as Treyarch hosted an employee only Guitar Hero 2 challenge as part of a charity fundraising event. 16 players, single elimination. One song played on expert, picked "at random" by the audience for each match. I won! I ended up playing Mother, Carry On My Wayward Son, Beast and the Harlot, and Freebird. It's really interesting how different it is playing in a tournament for an audience, I was nervous, missed easy notes, and fell behind on the last three songs. Also had some trouble with Star Power activation on the 360 controller (I usually play on the PS2). Happily, I managed to focus and pull out a victory each time though. Lots of fun, and it was great to meet a bunch of people who also played expert. Thank you Treyarch for running the event. :)

6/27/07 @ 9:07 AM Pacific

An update! :)
Well, it's been a long time since I did any sort of update... Figured it was about time. A brief summary: I haven't been at Sigil since March 12th. That's also the same day (really, the night before, after midnight) I managed to hit level 50 with my bard, Jerrithorn in Vanguard. Since then, I've been hired by Activision / Treyarch as a Multiplayer Programmer on their upcoming James Bond title. As part of that, I've moved up from Carlsbad to a new apartment in Los Angeles, just outside of Santa Monica, where Treyarch is.

5/17/07 @ 10:42 PM Pacific

Guitar Hero
Yeah, so I'm playing quite a bit of Guitar Hero. :) Great game!

6/18/06 @ 5:43 PM Pacific

Half a year...
It's been awhile since I updated this site, but I figured I should drop a note off about what's been going on in my life. In January, I started at NCsoft in Austin, working on an unannounced MMO title under Jon Van Canegham (Might & Magic / Heroes of Might & Magic). This, however, was canceled in April, though I managed to remain at NCsoft on the Core Technology team.

That's where I was until the middle of June, when I was contacted by Sigil Games about working as a gameplay programmer on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I started there this past Monday, July 18th, and it's been great. Vanguard is an amazing game I'm very happy to be working on.

As such, I'm now living in Carlsbad, CA, just north of San Diego. I miss all my friends from Texas, but I'm meeting tons of great new people here in California. Not to mention the weather is just a tiny bit nicer. *grins*

The webcam image is not updating, at least for now. Hopefully I'll have it up and running again, as I get things setup in my new apartment.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

7/21/05 @ 10:51 PM Pacific

Happy New Year!
Happy New Year everyone! :)

12/31/04 @ 11:18 PM Central

Projects Updated Again
The projects section has some additional information now, including some more detail on the projects on the main index page.

11/21/04 @ 7:58 PM Central

Projects Update & More
The projects section is now completely updated, as are some other portions of the site. Enjoy!

11/08/04 @ 9:51 AM Central

EverQuest II Movie
Here's a little movie I made of the three high end enviornments in EverQuest 2. Feerrott (Jungle), Everfrost (Arctic), and Lavastorm (Volcanic). You can download it here: http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/~ars/EQ2Zones.avi

11/07/04 @ 7:12 PM Central

Guild Wars Map
I really enjoyed the "E3 for Everyone" event done by Guild Wars during E3 this year. I made a Clickable World Map to help people remember all the places they went. Yes, it's slow, and simply coded, but it works. :)

05/19/04 @ 1:03 PM Central

Webcam added
I've added my webcam to the bottom of the menu links column. In case you've always wondered what it looks like here in Plano, TX, well here you go. :)

05/19/04 @ 9:56 AM Central

Some Updates!
Well, not as soon as I'd like, but better late than never. I added a bunch more information on my About Me page, and here are some links to a few things hiding on the server, but not integrated yet...
Savage Maps:

• alliancelost1 [map][overhead]
• rockcanyonb1 [map][overhead]
• uphillbattle1 [map][overhead]
• dm_tinypit [map][overhead]

05/03/04 @ 11:30 PM Central

Auto-Approve Configuration Mod for Savage
If you're looking for the latest version of my Auto-Approve Configuration Mod for Savage, you can get it here: http://jerrith.com/AACv0_91beta.zip
03/20/04 @ 9:37 AM Central

Jerrithian
Click here to download a demo version of Jerrithian, a 1-4 player 2D side scrolling space shooter game! More info to come.
09/28/03 @ 1:14 AM Central

Test Item
This is a test item, here as, you guessed it, a test! Gee, that's original, now isn't it? Hopefully there will be some real content here real soon. :)
09/27/03 @ 0:00 PM Central

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