Wow, lots of stuff happened. And great to see CF is on Bots-United! Welcome (back)!
I certainly hope things are going better (and keep going better) now for ya.
Looks like you're not the only one who got himself a 'boring' software engineering job. In fact I enjoy it very much as well. It is not AI and C/C++ but simply coding my webapps in Java are fun indeed.
I did try to bring up a new release of RB a while ago, but it is majorly flawed. And i think we all know the factor "time" is not on our side. Still finding someone who is willing to pay sallery for a day so i can use that day for bot-coding ;-)
Btw, did you guys knew i had a job-offer from Crytek years ago? It was for FarCry in those days. I declined in that time. 3 years later i had another chance but did not take it as well. I don't know why, but it feels good i did that. At the same time i wonder how it would be if i did take the chance.
Anyhow, I am married now, bought a house a few months back. I am now trying to get my Informatica degree in evening school.
I also played Crysis and saw some failures, most certainly with scripting. Some time i was waiting for Prophet who would give me his gun and get cover. He did not do anything but the timer went down and he died. I had to play that part 5 to 10 times before it went right (the scripting that is) so i could go on. Frustrated me a lot.
I am wondering about these new insights you have CF regarding AI. In the past few years things did not really get more exciting, though the marketing tells us differently.