These opinions do not reflect Volition's official positions

[sandywang5230]

Stringing people along is lame. I'm guilty of it, too. Nobody's perfect. But I'm trying to get better. Try to tell your applicants how long it's really going to take to get them moving to the next step.If you're rejecting someone, you can leave the door open. Sometimes your rejection letters can make people think that they will never have another shot at working there again. If that's the case, well, okay then, I guess. But is it the case? Not as far as I'm concerned. The door is always open to reapply. The door is always open to talk to me. Even after I've rejected you. In fact, if I reject someone and they keep in touch, I see that as a good thing. It seems like a mature and smart thing to do.Also, give you applicants your direct work e-mail address if you can. If you can't give them that for some dumb reason, give them your home e-mail. Let them contact you. Encourage them to stay in touch. Build that relationship. It might turn into something amazing. Don't screw up HR, talk to your HR department about it first, but probably you can keep in touch with these people.Before you hang up the phone from the phone interview, or after the on-site interview, tell the applicants that they should not hesitate to contact you if they want an update or for any reason. Remember, they're going to be biting their fingernails off and dreaming about your response. They probably have diarrhea from all the stress. Even if they know first hand that this process can take a really long time, it doesn't make it any less nerve-wracking.There's no reason to leave these people thinking that they'll botch everything if they ask you what's going on or if there's any news. And if they do ask you for an update, be straight up with them. It's okay to say that there are other applicants and that you can't decide yet, or that the team has been too busy to make a decision, although if that's the case, then that's kind of annoying and you should probably consider addressing that.Just remember that you're dealing with a human being. Someone who you could potentially be working with, or someday this person might be looking at your application. Who knows? There are all the reasons in the world to treat these people like you'd like to be treated. If you have the power to make or break someone's dreams, then wield that power like a kind and honorable king. I believe it's the right thing to do.The endAlright, that's a bunch of stuff. I feel like I've said my piece a few times over. If you actually read all of this, you should leave a comment or send me an e-mail or something. I'm impressed that you, or anyone, would read these ramblings. And that's just what these are. Ramblings. Try not to take them too seriously. I'm just some schmuck.On that note, I'd also like to point out that these are my opinions and mine alone. These opinions do not reflect Volition's official positions, Buy Rs Gold or the Volition audio team's official positions, or THQ's official positions, or the FLOTUS's official opinions, or any other silly ideas that you might get in your head. Honestly they probably won't even reflect my own opinions in a few months.Also: no bologna this time. Sorry. Except for that one that I just wrote. And this one: bologna. This piece was reprinted from AltDevBlogADay, a shared blog initiative started by mike_acton devoted to giving Runeacape game developers of all disciplines a place to motivate each other to write regularly about their personal Runeacape game development passions. Newsbrief: Half-Life developer Valve Software has launched a closed beta for Source Filmmaker, a free tool allowing users to record and create movies inside its Source Runeacape game engine.It's the same tool Valve has used to create promotional movies for its Runeacape games. Source Filmmaker enables users to capture and edit animation using assets in a Source Runeacape game. It's meant to condense various animation studio tools into a single suite, and even offers a facial animation system with lip-syncing.This news follows a couple of weeks after director Shane Acker of the film "9" and Brown Bag Films announced that they are using tools and technologies based on the Source Runeacape game engine for their upcoming animated film Deep. They also intend to release playable content to complement its movie with the tools.Information on signing up for Source Filmmaker's free beta, as well as a video demonstrating the tool, is available here. Valve will release the tool through Steam later this year. In this reprinted altdevblogaday in-depth piece, Valve Software programmer Bruce Dawson explains how to switch from using xperfview to WPA, and why this is worthwhile for Runeacape game developers. For many years xperfview.exe has been the main tool for analyzing xperf ETW traces. However, starting last fall the Windows Performance Toolkit started including wpa.exe as an alternative. While the early versions had some significant rough edges, the latest version 6.2.8400.0, released in tandem with Windows 8 RC is now superior to xperfview in most ways.In this post I'll briefly explain how to switch from using xperfview to WPA, and why this is worthwhile.Before proceeding, you should be sure to get the latest version of WPA, to avoid being frustrated by bugs that are already fixed. The latest version as of June 19, 2012, is available as part of the ADK or as part of the Windows Software Development Kit SDK for Windows 8 Release Preview. Gotta love those Microsoft names.This post assumes some familiarity with xperf ETW and xperfview. In particular, you should definitely know now to record a trace. If you don't follow those instructions, then you may find that some of the graphs below are empty. Don't say I didn't warn you. You can also grab the sample trace from my wait analysis post.It may be useful to understand xperf analysis basics, xperf for excess CPU consumption, and xperf wait analysis, but much of the UI flow is quite different with WPA, so some of the details will be different.The two articles in the xperf documentation series, CPU sampling and CPU scheduling, are still relevant ndash; understanding the column names is as important as ever.