For all of you out there who are wanting to see more game development articles, I have decided to wait until I have my first prototype of the sample game up and running before I start writing the articles. I think this will be the best thing for all parties involved. That way, I don't have to keep on changing and updating the articles as I refactor my code (it is a work in progress after all). Also, you don't have to wait for me to get my patooty in gear. When you see the articles start coming, they are going to FLOW (at least, a lot more quickly than I could ever hope to write them while writing the game).
So how is the development of the game going? Well, it's going well. I only have a couple more items to knock off the todo list before the core game engine is finished. It is written in such a way, that I should be more than able to use this same engine for any future games (I plan on doing a Roguelike after this game). So, any of you excited about game engine development might be somewhat excited about that.
Last night, I just finished implementing my Console and keyboard handling for the base Application class. Handling of input and rendering is done in the engine using a pseudo-MVC implementation (Model-View-Controller). One thing is for sure, using an MVC approach makes it a lot easier to manage. I can't wait to get to the core implementation of the Tanks game using this approach. It should make the road a lot easier to travel on :).
I tweaked some of my Ruby scripts in my build process. Basically, I now have automatic handling of versioning (including updating of all AssemblyInfo files), automatic generation of Release Notes using special comments directly from my Subversion comment history, and staging of releases (creation of Release Notes, zipping up of binaries and source, and staging to a special location (later to be FTPd)). Overall, I'm quite proud of it and I can't wait to start showing it off. I feel quite pragmatic, that's for sure!
More information to come at a later date. Once the game is in at least prototype phase, I will plan on posting releases so people can download and play the game or just look at the source code. Maybe that way, you all can keep me honest about making progress on the game (in order to make progress on the articles of course).
So, until next time, That's How The Cookie Crumbles!
Well, I think I might be officially addicted to Roguelike RPGs (thanks Chris!). What finally put my over the edge? GearHead. That's what. I don't think I realized just how much can be done with just ASCII art. The source code is also available for this bad boy. One thing that I love about it by just glancing at it? There's a bunch of data files that use a custom scripting language (a "Domain Specific Language" if I were up to using buzz words) to describe the elements of the game. Sweet.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that this is going to consume all my time this weekend when I'm not working on my own game. Damn it, Chris!! Why did you have to do this to me? :P
[Update: Interesting. I just noticed that Gearhead is actually written in Pascal. Sweet.]
Well, since no other of my cohorts have blogged about it yet (minus Jason Mauer of course), I wanted to let everyone else know that the initial Portland Code Camp website is up and running. There is little information on it as of currently because we are still in the planning stage. But there is a way to register if you wish to go (it's free of charge and is on the weekend (so hopefully you won't have to miss any work)).
Portland Code Camp
The website will be filled in a lot more in the coming days and weeks hopefully.
P.S. I especially love how Jason M. took the top-level of domain for the country of Montserrat and adapted it for a "Microsoft" top-level domain. Clever Jason M. ;) I'm not sure I would have done the same myself (is Microsoft in the business of taking over foreign governments now ?), but to each his own :).
While Chris is at it, I thought I would post that I'm also a member of the IGDA. Unlike others though, I'm in it for the chicks. And I'm not talking about women, I'm talking about the baby ducks. Yeah, Baby, Yeah!!!!
You know, I find myself fascinated by software architecture. I love looking at how other people have approached the problem of designing a game engine. Unfortunately, that usually involves reverse-engineering a bunch of source code. If any of you out there (meaning my handful of subscribers) are like me, you might want to look at the reference for the NeoEngine here.
I have absolutely no idea HOW I came across this, but I'm glad I did. Do you know of any API references out there that you would like to share? They don't have to be "top-notch," I'm just intrigued by any of these kinds of references. The way I look at it is that it's always a good thing to try to look at topics you're familiar with in a different light.
Enjoy!
Will you be there? I know I will.
From what I know, my buddy Chris Williams (of Heroic Adventure fame, of course (if you've never heard of Heroic Adventure, wonder on over and give it a try, especially if you're feeling a little nastalgic)) will be there. So far, I've heard of a couple of others that will also be there, like ZMan and David Weller.
If you're going to be there, drop me a line and perhaps we can meet up for drinks sometime. One thing is for sure, it's going to be a blast.
Testing a code snippit:
Posted in
I’m mostly posting this here for my own sake, but perhaps someone else is having the issue out there too.
Basically, my computer rebooted unexpectedly today (first time in a long time), so I whipped open the Event Viewer to see what happened. Well, to my surprise, the Event Viewer logs hadn’t been updated since November, 2004. That was quite a surprise to me, that’s for sure. I’m not sure if this stopped working when I installed SP2 or what, but it was an easy fix. Basically, I went into the properties for each log (right click the log in Event Viewer and select Properties), and chose the option “Overwrite events as needed” and cleared the logs. Once I did that, everything started working normally. Oh well! Most likely, I probably did something stupid a while ago that hosed it. At least it’s working now!
Hello everyone. I'm throwing this post out there as a call for ideas. Here in Portland, Oregon, we are looking at having a Game Development track at our Code Camp towards the end of July. I have a bunch of things that *I* would like to see, but Code Camp is not about me, it is about all of you out there. What kinds of things would you like to see (or even present) when it comes to a Game Development track? None of these talks need to be DirectX-specific as the Code Camp is not sponsored by Microsoft.
I would throw up the ideas I have but I don't want them to influence all of your ideas. Please feel free to shoot me an email at jolson88 AT yahoo DOT com or simply post a comment here on this post. I'm hoping to combine all these ideas over the next week to start to get a good idea and doing some planning for the track soon.
And remember, Code Camps are about the local community. So if you are wanting to perhaps be a presenter, let me know and we'll see what we can do.
While at Tech Ed this last week, I was able to have a couple conversations with John Lam of http://www.iuknown.com fame. One of them regarded the importance of notation when expressing a problem. There are certain types of notations that are best at describing certain solutions. Take for example musical notation. What you can express compactly using musical notation would take a lot of text to express in English (or any other language for that matter). The same goes with fields like mathematics, chemistry, etc.
How does this relate to programming? A programming language is a form of notation. What can be expressed well in one language can not be expressed well in a different language. That is one reason (of many) to learn multiple languages. By learning different languages, and hence different notations, you start to realize better ways to express a given problem by using different notations. Where the idea of notation really gets interesting is when you start looking at the idea of Model Driven Architecture and Software Factories. In some ways, MDA and Factories are similar, in some ways they are quite different. However, they both try to solve a similar problem using different notations. I’m going to take this opportunity to discuss Model Driven Architecture and, more generally, a tendency in software development that I like to call Picture-Oriented Development.
While I believe that Picture-Oriented Development does have its uses, it can also be abused quite easily if you’re not careful. While pictures are good at expressing a thousand words, pictures are bad at expressing a single word. The problem is that once a picture fully expresses a problem, the view of the entire system as a whole has been lost due to the sheer amount of detail present. This syndrome is quite similar to a thousand voices talking. When there are only three voices talking, you can isolate and listen to a single voice. But once there are thousands of voices speaking in equal volume, your brain loses the ability to isolate a single voice. In a way, pictures are a form of macro-communication while certain aspects of building a software system really need forms of micro-communication in order to be successful. Solving micro-problems with a form of macro-notation presents an inherent disconnect between the problem and the solution. In our job, we need to avoid this disconnect and any associated context switches as often as we can because software development is inherently a complicated process.
I’m not trying to say that Picture-Oriented Development is a bad thing. I’m saying that it is easy to buy into the hype of it all, especially with the new glitz and glamour that is coming in Visual Studio 2005. You might be able to tell that I am still quite skeptical of using MDA as a software development platform from beginning to end. Do I have a better solution? No, I do not. I am just doubtful that Picture-Oriented Development is the way to go. I do believe, however, that we need to find a better way to develop software. I just think that when discussing MDA vs. Software Factories, Software Factories seems like the more realistic way to go.
I realized something when I woke up in the middle of the night before leaving Florida. There was one particular common quality (among many) between all my favorite sessions at Tech Ed that got me thinking. All my favorite sessions were talking about software issues that were independent of a given Microsoft technology. Meaning, in my favorite sessions, the technology used in the solution to the problem was merely an implementation detail. Of the sessions I didn’t like, a good number of them were sessions that were simply “hocking their warez” (“drinking the Microsoft kool-aid” if you will).
I’m a strong believer that the qualities that contribute the development of high quality software are qualities that trascend their implementation, qualities that are can be applied to numerous different technologies. It is in part due to this belief that I enjoy presentations that discuss these qualities. If you’re not a good developer now, there is no amount of technology that can be applied in order to make you a good one. Technology can’t make crap into a diamond. Perhaps technology can make crap into crap of a less pungent nature, but technology won’t eat swallow crap and spit out a diamond. Often times, it is garbage in, garbage out. I suppose that’s why I’m intrigued when people keep looking for technology that will make them develop better. Improving efficiency is one thing, but improving quality is a whole different ballgame.
I’m so interested in these abstract qualities that I get rather turned off when people start selling their products and explaining how the said product will fix everything we need fixed. Perhaps I’m just getting more skeptical the older I get, but I’ve seen way too much vaporware to seriously listen to marketing speak. I’m not saying that the presentations were all marketing speak. It’s just that I would much rather see content related to the world than watch an hour and a half firework show.
I was watching ESPN the other day when I saw this product name: “Elephant Beautiful Balls.” I’m serious, this is no joke. Is it just me, or do any of you think that this is quite an unfortunate product name?
I just finished this track presented by Ted Neward (of TheServerSide.Net) and Gregor Hohpe (author of “Enterprise Integration Patterns”). I have to say (and this may surprise some of you that have been reading my prior Tech Ed posts) I totally enjoyed this session. Since I’ve been focusing on the presentations and such, why stop, eh? Gregor obviously knows what he’s talking about. I find myself, especially after the first day, enjoying seeing presentations where the presenter isn’t just reading off the power point slides. Quite a bit of the presentation was more conversation, architect to architect, which I also enjoyed tremendously.
Although I’m sure there are others that might not like Ted Neward’s presentation style, I am not one of them. I like how personal he is. I like how, as a presenter, he talks with/to his audience (rather than reading to). I think with some of his jokes, there might be people that get offended which is too bad because it’s nice anytime seeing a presenter who has a sense of humor. I’ve lost count of how many dry presenters I’ve seen over the years. The act of presenting and listening can be awkward enough, let alone when the presenter isn’t making an effort to relate to or interact with the audience.
I found that this presentation basically drove home a lot of points that I’ve been thinking about lately. I like messaging patterns. Not only for their scalability but also for their ability to lower the coupling within an existing system. Today I plan to attend the cabana so I can chat with Gregor and Ted. I basically want to get their opinions (with their experience) about some of the ideas I’ve had. Mainly, the idea of using a messaging system (or messaging patterns in general) in order to lower coupling between subsystems within the same application. I personally feel that messaging patterns just don’t shine in distributed applications. I think that when applied properly in the right context, they can be very powerful within a single application also. Any of you who have read my prior game articles have possibly seen the lean towards messaging structures that I’m starting to take, when applicable.
Hopefully a couple more of the sessions I attend today and tomorrow are this good (perhaps I did just wake up on the wrong side of the bed Monday). I give this one 9/10 IBM Thinkpad X41s (just because the new X41 is THAT sexy).
This is a quote directly from Don Box when he was asked to describe himself for a video that Mike Hall was making for Tech Ed (in the middle of his session). It was actually kind of eerie because Mike and two cameramen came running in from the back of the room and ran all the way up onto stage. It was almost like watching a very geeky version of Cops. Anyways, here’s the quote:
[Don Box describing himself]: “Consider me a representation of an ideal”. Classic! What a great quote! I was laughing any time I thought about that today. Way too geeky!
Chris mentioned tonight how he was linked from Coding4Fun on MSDN (although it might be gone already for some of you following that link). Congrats Chris! I’m proud of ya’ man! And keep up those articles  .
I noticed a quote from a recent post by Julia Lerman (aka Julie Lerman (right Julie? HA! (I’m just glad I finally know what the whole “Julia” vs “Julie” thing is all about (I can’t tell you how long that was bothering me for (I lost several nights of sleep over it for a matter of fact (not really, but it could have happened)))))). If you’re two lazy to click through to that link I will post the quote here:
“Tech Ed for me is more about catching up with people and meeting new folks”.
After having a chat with Julie on the bus ride back to the hotel today, I realized that I totally agree with her. Where I have gotten the most value out of Tech Ed this year is the social networking aspect. The amount of people that I’ve been able to finally meet or to spend time hanging out with has been great (it’s funny how difficult it is hanging around with someone when you live across country from each other). I think it might just be the sessions that I’ve been going to, but I was hoping to get a lot more details and content from the presentations than just a twenty thousand foot overview. I must say though that I did attend some enlightening sessions (like Don Box’s discussion on “Metadata Soup”). The way Don Box looks at different development paradigms is quite refreshing.
But back to the social networking aspect of Tech Ed. Tonight I was able to spend some good time having a blast with Chris Williams (aka Blogus Maximus (that never gets old for me!!!)) from GeeksWithBlogs. Some of you might be surprised since it seemed like Chris and I exchanged some words over the whole “Signal To Noise” ratio thing. Well, I have to say that Chris is HILARIOUS and I absolutely enjoyed spending time with him (hopefully we’ll get some more time, eh Chris?). I’m proud to call Chris my homie! And while I’m on the matter, I was also able to spend some time chilling out with Jeff Jullian. What a great guy!
And now that I think about it I was able to have a great (albeit short) conversation with both DonXML and SqlDiva. What a hoot! I look forward to seeing more of those two in the future. I also got to spend some time with Chris Goldfarb, Rich Claussen, Cory Isakson, Stuart Celarier, Jason Mauer, etc. The list goes on and on (too many people to mention!!!).
It continues to amaze me the number of connections with people that I make simply because of blogging.
I’m posting this here for me more than anyone, but if any of you haven’t heard of these applications you have to check them out. I must give a quick thanks to Scott Hanselman who I was exposed to these utilities through.
SlickRun
TaskSwitchXP
I had a great dinner tonight. I finally got to meet John “iunknown” Lam and got to have some great conversations about Code Generation, Ruby, Source Control, and so on. Of the people I knew, at dinner there was John, Scott Hanselman, Jason Mauer, Cory Isakson and a few others whose names escape me right now (have I told you that I’m *really* bad with names?). On the bus ride home I got to meet SqlDiva, DonXML’s wife (at least, that’s what she said (I hope I got the link right)). Mauer and I were having a pseudo-philosophical conversation about static vs. dynamic languages, writing code, etc. and DonXML’s wife said that I really need to have a chat with (or at least introduce myself to) DonXML because he would have loved to be part of the conversation Mauer and I were having. Well, I’ll have to see if I can arrange a meeting tomorrow (as in tracking down one person in the entire conference ).
I’m too tired to type much else about the conference today. I got some work done on the Managed DirectX tutorials I’m doing. I also got some more practice on emacs (yes, you heard me right, emacs (I need a good platform for developing Ruby with)). More to come in the future.
I never thought I would say this about Tech Ed, but it’s actually refreshing to attend a presentation that wasn’t a direct reading from a set of powerpoint slides. Scott’s presentation was quite good. Then again, Scott is a great presenter. I just wish other presenters would go read the presentation tips he has posted on his blog.
The talk wasn’t quite about what I thought it was going to be. On the other hand, it was much more “hands on”. On the “not what I thought it would be” side, Scott largely talked about how they applied code generation at Corillian, rather than about code generation itself. However, I can’t help but think in the back of my mind that this is actually a good thing. What it did was provide a good context in which to learn all about what code generation is good for. I don’t know if I would have liked it better though if maybe he drilled into more detail about a specific application of code generation rather than an overview of a bunch of different applications.
Overall, I think it was a great presentation. I give it a 9/10. An A for this one. There might be a chance that the only reason I haven’t awarded it a 10 though is because I want some room to grow in case I hear a better presentation (which if the way presentations have gone so far is any indication, this WON’T happen (which is definitely disappointing)).
Good job, Scott.
Well, I only have a sentence or two for a Day 1 wrap up, so I won’t be long, I swear. I’m not sure how often I will be posting like I did today (who knows, you may not hear from me the rest of the week), but I will try (or not). On to the wrap up…..
The best way that I can wrap up most of the presentations today is with a quote of how I responded to someone else today when they asked me how the day was:
“I had the apparent pleasure of seeing a bunch of live powerpoint readings. It was like poetry, evidently.”
And with that I’m out!
I was really looking forward to this session……… until it started that is. At first I loved the approach the presentation team was going to take. Basically, instead of power pointing all of us to death, they were going to do a run-through of the entire software development process (from spec to deploy). My excitement didn’t last too long though. I believe it ended when I realized that they were going to do the EXACT same presentation that is ALREADY on the net. I may be alone here, but I didn’t fly all the way to Florida to see presentations that I could have seen at home on the webcasts. Geez!
I think in hindsight, I must be in some kind of finicky mood today because I found the presentations didn’t live up to my expectations. Oh well, perhaps after some more sleep, I will be a little more “open-minded” tomorrow  .
See ya’ lata’, alligata’
[#BEGIN_RANT#]
Is it just me, or has the proliferation of mobile devices actually made people more rude and less considerate of others? This is a major pet peeve of mine. I call it “mobile manners” (well, not really (and you can tell I’m not a marketing guy by that horrible name :D)).
Basically, this kid in front of me has his cell phone ring in the middle of the presentation. If that wasn’t rude enough, he not only didn’t silence the sucker, he answered it and started talking. WTF?!?!? It wasn’t enough of a clue that everyone around him was staring at him. NOOOOOOO, he was just blissfully chatting away. Does he not realize how much of a dick he’s being?!? I guess not.
This is also my annoyance with the almighty Blackberry (the mobile device, not the fruit). I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been sitting in a meeting and someone’s Blackberry goes off. And what does this person do? Of course he doesn’t put it away or silence it, because that would be too polite. And we can’t find ourselves being polite in this day and age! NO! They whip out the Blackberry and start typing away at it, happily ignoring EVERYTHING that is happening in the meeting. This is especially annoying when this person is THE reason the meeting was being held in the first place. As if that isn’t bad enough, they do the same thing around clients and users!!!!!! What does that communicate to the client or user about you as a company? ARG!!!
I’m going to SCREAM if I have to deal with jerks much more this week.
CAVEAT: I may sound really pissed now, but I’m not. I’m actually in a really great mood and just felt like writing about something, so I chose one of my pet peeves.
Oh well, the session is starting, so I need to go unless I become the rude one in here. Here’s to hoping this one is better than the last two!!!
[#END_RANT#]
“Why don’t cha just stick the whole ding-dong in your mouth?!?!?”
And no, this wasn’t said to me. If you want an explanation, go over and ask Rich Claussen.
Good news: There was some good information in this session.
Bad news: It took 45 minutes to get to it.
Once again, a presentation that was FAR from perfect. I don’t know where to start. In my opinion, the presentation seemed backwards to me. Basically, there was a 30–45 minute demo showing how to use a simple factory. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no context provided before the demo to know anything about where you were at. You only got to the good stuff after the demo. And by that time, we were running short on time so the last part was just hurried by. Since the session was called “*Building* and Using Software Factories” I made the assumption that it would actually be about *building* software factories (and maybe a little bit about software factories in general). I think the session could have been renamed “Using Already Existing Software Factories” and expectations would have been met better.
The other complaint was that there wasn’t even much about “using” software factories. Quite a bit of the demo was “okay, let me open these files I have on the hard drive that are already coded and hooked up to use the factory”. Not a lot of help in my opinion. But that’s just me.
I’m starting to think that perhaps I woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something this morning. I’m not yet ready to admit to myself that I just attended to lack luster presentations in a row. Once again, I must give that one a 6/10. Passing, but just barely.
Luckily, the session I’m sitting at waiting for is “Microsoft Visual C# Under The Covers: An In-Depth Look At C# 2.0”. Considering that the presentation is actually being done by none other than the man Anders Hejlsberg himself, I’m hoping this will finally be the quality of presentation that I was expecting from the whole conference. Here’s to hoping…..
Well, this session was not exactly what I was hoping it was going to be. I suppose for what it is worth, the depth of the content was fine for this early in the week. However, I was really hoping that the talk would go into more depth than it really did. One quick lesson I learned (simply because I heard Scott Hanselman talk about it and then had it verified myself in the first track): get to the sessions early if you want a seat. The sessions really fill up fast. I wasn’t about to go without a seat in the first afternoon session. I’m just now settling down for the “Software Factories” session. Luckily, this time I got a really good seat because I arrived twenty minutes before the start of the session.
As for the Connected Systems session, I think the presenter left something to be desired in the way of presentation skill. I don’t know, perhaps I’m just spoiled from seeing people like Scott present. I find that after seeing presenters like Scott, I’m getting pretty picky about presentations (although I would like to say that Ari Bixhorn did a wonderful job on the Indigo session on Sunday at the User Group Leader Summit held by Ineta).
Piece of advice for anyone putting together slides: use friendly colors. There was one slide in this session that contained white words on a light green background. Not only that, but they were quite small and could not be seen in the back of the room. Just a minor annoyance. I also got the feeling that the presenter didn’t get too familiar with the slides before the session. It sounded like he was reading from the slides a lot and not communicating directly to the audience. If I’m in the audience, don’t read to me! I can read the slides just fine, as well as being able to read the slides a lot faster than you can talk them.
Other than those picky things, I got *some* good information from the session, but was left wishing the session would go into more detail.
I’m not one to give any kind of ratings to any kind of things. BUT, if I were, I would give that presentation/session a 6/10. Passing, but not with flying colors.
Ciao!
While I’m not sure I would describe Steve Balmer as larger than life, he’s pretty darn close, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the keynote (mostly because of Steve Balmer directly), it wasn’t as good as I was hoping for. This is mostly because the keynote definitely seemed more targeted towards IT Pros instead of developers, methinks. While there were several developer topics discussed, it was definitely geared towards IT Pros.
One thing I’ve definitely underestimated is the sheer amount of people that are here at the conference. Just to put it in perspective, Steve mentioned that there are around 11k people here at the conference. While that may not sound like too much, once you see all of them packed into a convention center (even as one as large as the Orlando Convention Center), you start realizing just how big that number of human beings is (especially taking into account “robust” or “pleasingly large” people like me).
Once my friend Rich posts his pictures from the keynote, I will try to update this post so you all can see how it looked from the inside. Well, I better stop posting since I’m actually posting this from the first track and I really should get back to learning.
Oh, and if you see a bunch of posts at once coming from me, it’s because the wireless connections in the convention center aren’t exactly stellar. So, I’m writing all these posts in BlogJet and I’ll post them when I get online (which may not be until tonight).
Ciao!
Well, I'm here finally. If any of y'all are here, I'm staying at the JW Marriott, Orlando Grand Lakes. Give me a little ringy-dingy if you want to catch up sometime (or just track me down at the conference (or you can send me an MSN Messenger message at jolson88 AT yahoo DOT com). As for tonight, I be needin' me some rest after such a long travel day. Peace out!
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