The worst Moviestorm crash we've ever seen

We want Moviestorm to be easy to use. We try not to dazzle you with an enormously complicated interface, with hundreds of buttons and menus. In some cases, this means that you can't get the level of precision you need for a certain task. We're always trying to find ways to let you do that, without transforming the Moviestorm interface into the control panel for a supersonic jet.

One of things that can sometimes prove difficult is precise positioning of objects in the Set Workshop View. Thankfully, we've got some new functionality currently in development which will help.



This gizmo is called the, er ... well, it's actually called The Gizmo right now, because we haven't come up with a more sensible name for it. It allows you to "nudge" an object by very small amounts, until you get it exactly where you want it. As well as allowing linear movement, the Gizmo (somehow I think that name is here to stay) also allows you to apply rotation to an object, in any direction.

We let Ben take the Gizmo for a test drive, and he got a little carried away:

Of all the Views in all the Moviestorms, he had to make changes to mine.

It was a Tuesday, just like any other Tuesday in rain-soaked Cambridge. I'd just returned from the 2008 Machinima Film Festival in New York. Crazy city. I was jetlagged, but anxious to get back to work. Before I left for New York, I'd completely rewritten and expanded the internal help pages for Moviestorm's Set Workshop View. It was a big job, but I'd got it finished and submitted to QA for testing just before I left. I was feeling proud of my work. I was ready to make a start on the Director's View section.

Dave Lloyd, co-founder of the company and Chief Bit Shoveller, looked up as I walked into the room. He seemed nervous; sheepish. Perhaps even guilty. I stared him down. I knew he'd crack eventually.

"Ingram," he gulped, "good to see ya! I, er ... I didn't know you were back in town. I'd love to stay and chat, but I got things to do, you know? Gotta run!"

I wasn't buying. This schmuck knew something, and I was going to find out what. I grabbed him by the lapels of his smart checkered suit.

"Spill it, Lloyd," I growled, "whadya know?"

A single bead of perspiration rolled down his craggy cheek, glinting in the moonlight, and then dropped to impact on the top of his trusty MacBook like a gunshot.

"I made some changes." he whispered, "I'm sorry! I didn't know it would go this far!"

I might have guessed. Lloyd was always pulling crazy stunts like this. They didn't call him "The Workaholic" for nothing. I pulled out my copy of The Ruby Way from inside my trenchcoat and pressed it to his throat. Violence is the only thing these engineers understand.

"Show me," I muttered between clenched teeth, "or I'll cut you a new programming language."

I felt sick. All my hard work had been for nothing. My documentation was now as useless as a J2EE engineer on an OpenGL project. This job gets to you sometimes. It eats away at your soul like a World Of Warcraft addiction. Still, as I walked down the smoke-filled alleyway towards my office, I had to admit: Lloyd's changes were good. Crazy, but good. Maybe I could document them after all ...