Managed World

What is up? Not much by the looks of it. I'm finally starting to go out and dig up the various game engines written in .NET that I can leverage in the project I'm revisiting (as I'm not really in the mood to reinvent a wheel that has already been re-invented like a hundred million billion times by various college students out there (here's a theory: I think there are more game engine projects out there than hamburgers McDonald's has sold in the entire history of their company)).

So, what did I find? Sadly, not really anything to write home about. I found several projects, they were just in several stages of disarray. Several of them even have had a good amount of effort spent on them in the past. Some of them even show some progress and potential if only they were still active. Let us review ladies and gent's.

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Axiom: practically dead from what I can tell (the source forge project's home page isn't even functional and there are no binary or source files available for download).

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Realm Forge: somewhat active. There hasn't been _any_ news on the main page in quite a while when I visited the site. On top of that, there is very little documentation of any redeemable quality. Sure, there is some auto-generated documentation on the API but actually usage documentation is several lacking. From what I saw on the wiki, there is but one "real" tutorial posted. The extent of the tutorial is a single C# source file where the "tutorial" is embedded in C# comments. Not exactly what I would call a "quality" tutorial. 

Sure, I could go and figure it all out myself. I may even still do that. Just call me spoiled. After working with the numerous .NET libraries and products I have at work, I like to be using a product that is supported and can at least point me in the right direction when things go astray.

To be fair, I'm not entirely disappointed. Realm Forge is looking to put itself forward as "the entire package" and not just a pretty renderer. I think it has some potential in that regard too. It wraps up a bunch of different components in order to package itself as a complete game engine. I just think it has quite a bit of "maturing" to go through until it reaches that point.

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Haddd 3D: it looks pretty and looks like it has potential. The drawback for me? All tutorials and help docs that I could find were written in Spanish. I know that the code should be enough, but I'm on a sojourn to find the "complete package" (or as darn near as I can find to it) and would like to be helped along in the process. Once again, I know I'm a lazy bones so telling me so won't provoke me in the least bit.

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Maybe I've just been out of the loop for that long now (how depressing). The next ones on my list to investigate are Irrlicht and Purple#. I'm hoping they will be a little more promising than the ones investigated so far. Have any of you come across some good .NET-based game engines or 3d engines that you like using?

In the meantime, I think I'm just going to go dink around with Ogre3d in C++ for a while and see what kind of fun I can have. Ciao!

I'm in the process of cleaning up my office so I made a pass through my technical books to determine which ones to get rid of and which ones to keep. Boy am I just a little depressed now.

Not only is there a HUGE stack of books ready to be led off into Technical Book Heaven but I made the unfortunate mistake of adding up just how much money I spent on the whole collection of books. Well, I'm sad to report that I'm taking back just over $1300 worth of technical books. I suppose the good news is that I've realized that I don't spend nearly that much money on technical books anymore. Not only that, but the technical books I have been buying have actually been pretty darn good.

I think a lot of this has to do with the technical book addiction I went through when first getting up to speed with programming. I haven't been programming for that long. Four years ago or so, I started buying up technical books in mass doses to "play catch up". Well, I think I relatively catched up (as much as you can in technology that is) but at a severe cost to my pocket book. Geez, sometimes it feels like I would spend less money if I were a drug addict rather than a programmer.

I raise my glass (okay, can of Coke) in hopes that next time I do a purging it won't be nearly as depressing.

But you know what? Even if it is, that's the way it is. Why? Because that's how I roll. Yup, you heard me: that's how I roll. Got a problem with 'dat? I din't thank sooo!

Well, my hosting renewal came up again. I've decided that it is not worth the money to pay for any hosting of this site (Managed World) since I don't leverage it at all. With that in mind, I've decided to move back to solely using GWB (http://jolson.geekswithblogs.net). So, if you are hitting the RSS feed here on http://www.managed-world.com please change it back to http://jolson.geekswithblogs.net as I will be taking this site down in a month or so.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I will send out another warning when the time comes for the cutover.

(And yes, Chris, after being a consumer of the GWB feed for a while now, I have a distinctly *different* feeling about the whole "Signal/Noise Ratio" argument now so you can expect me to be a good citizen :D)

P.S. DAMN! After going back and reading that Signal/Noise Ratio post I feel like such a dick head. Boy has consuming the feed changed the whole face of how I feel. I want to delete that post so bad, but I guess I'll keep it around to remind myself of how much of an idiot I can be at times.

Okay, I really hope this is not a scam. Because if it is, well, it shouldn't be because, well, it's cool, and... stuff.

Thanks go to Chris Sells for linking to this video.

Well, I've decided to revisit an old project that I haven't worked on for a while. The project was a game called "Tanks!" that was going to be the basis for a set of articles on game development with Managed DirectX. I'm still doubtful that the articles will make a come back but I definitely want to revive the project, with a twist that is.

Instead of a flat out Tanks game, I'm going to make it more of a programming game. Think of Terrarium meets Robot Battle (or Mind Rover (choose one)) meets Combat. You will be able to create your own Tanks in .NET that will be run in the game itself. I've been wanting to explore this kind of idea for a while and I think this might server as an idea vehicle (no pun intended) for doing so.

The few of you that attended the talk I gave way back at the Portland Code Camp might remember me talking about the architecture of the engine. Well, that will _radically_ change now. I don't know if I've just matured (doubtful) or just have a fresh pair of eyes to look at the problem (more likely), but I've realized that the messaging-based architecture I was using was WAY overkill for the problem. When it comes to the saying "using the right tool for the right job" well, I was using a chainsaw to slice up cucumbers for a salad (and in my opinion it shows).

For the first version I will be ripping out the physics engine entirely (as I don't think it really helps with the gameplay itself). I will be ripping out the messaging infrastructure. This should not only make it less overkill, but it should make it more approachable for the less experienced programmer as well. It may even be that the first version has just manual controls to control the Tanks as well. So be it :).

Maybe this time I can bite off a significant less chunk and see it through to at least the first public release (which would be a drastic step up for me (those of you who know me, feel free to shake your head in enthusiastic agreement at this point)). This time around, more unit tests, more integration, more re-use/adoption rather than roll-your-own.

I think it should be a fun thing. Who knows, maybe I can follow it through to completion with at least programmer art (and I'm sure some of you wouldn't mind since a finished set of articles).

In an earlier post of mine, I linked to this article by Jim Shore on how building software is nothing like construction. This is a topic I've been thinking about a fair amount lately and I've come to a conclusion: I don't agree entirely with Jim. Here's one of the quotes that have been hanging around in my noodle as of late:

"

In the software world, there is no reason for us to follow the practices of an industry limited by Newtonian laws. We have no gravity. There is no inertia. Lines of code have no weight.

If we want to dig a metaphorical hole after pouring metaphorical concrete, there's nothing to stop us. If we want to flip the software upside down and build a foundation after we've built the building, we can do it. Our only limits are in are (sic) heads. Once we stop thinking that software development is like construction, we'll have one less limitation to struggle with.

"

While it is technically true that we, as software developers, are not governed by Newtonian laws, I think there is one statement where Jim's hammer misses the nail's head: "Our only limits are in are (sic) heads". This is where I disagree.

It is indeed true that we are not governed by physical, world-bound laws. However, that does not mean that we are not governed by any laws whatsoever. This is not a logical conclusion. There are most certainly laws that we are bound by depending upon the context in which we are developing within. It is just that the laws are software-bound instead of physics-bound. Sometimes these laws are relative (like trying to build a new Enterprise-level application in .NET and SQL Server at a company whose entire infrastructure is built upon Unix and Oracle). I'm sure sometimes there are software laws that are absolute as well. The only limits are not in our heads. There are very real-world limits that will scope and change a possible solution. To me, that is one of the key points behind using the right tool for the right job. If we didn't have these constraints, we could use any solution for any problem no matter what the context may be (which unfortunately, I have seen done before).

To me, the interesting piece of research would not be researching the fact that we are not bound by physical laws. I think the interesting research is finding out what laws we are bound by in the virtual world. Who is going to be the Descartes, Newton, or Einstein of computer software?