Classes And Ants, What else is going to happen today?
I did some crazy development last night that you all might find interesting, and had so much fun with it that I forgot to clean up after myself at work. Well, I tell you what, the ants were enough to get my mind rolling in the morning. I spent the better part of two hours fighting it out with the first wave of these fuckers and tore them apart. My desk space was tinted by their blood, my keyboard nearly lost to the maelstrom of water and smashing that went on amidst the fighting, I took a picture which I will upload a little later, but suffice to say that they lost, and so did I.
Posted on November 30th, 2006 by Bob in Game Development
What makes a great Modder?
Over the years I have probably been approached by mod recruiters a hundred times, promising me things like fame and fortune as long as I work on their projects. Most have failed miserably to spark any sort of interest in their projects and more often than not, they fail to get out of the gate with much of anyone, leaving much to be desired for them to actually put a team together and get serious about their ideas. The few that I have had the pleasure of working with have gained my interest through many of the same processes that the lesser known mods have, but with a twist. They have put thought into their project.
Posted on November 29th, 2006 by Bob in Game Development
All together now…
Over the last year that I have been coding in the world I have been confused to all lengths by something that seems to be repeated throughout the world, loneliness. No matter where I look I see programmers alone, and they are always in that state, no matter what I have tried to do in regards to bringing in partners or joining others on their projects, It’s a lot like pulling teeth, and its about time it came to an end.
When I was just a nubile programmer, still wearing my baby shoes and sucking my pointer thumb, I was charged with programming an application. The majority of it was child’s play, but things like memory management and file manipulation were driving me crazy. I tried for days to get things sorted but no matter what I did my problems persisted and it was time to find some help. Turning to my best friend at the time, I asked a simple question, “Would you help me with this?” I was stunned by the response, but it didn’t register in my mind for one reason or another. There was nothing I could do to bring this application to fruition; I tried to query a number of people to get some assistance with the app, but to no avail. It was a lost cause, and I was puzzled over it for months.
Posted on November 28th, 2006 by Bob in Application Development
the end of the whole mess…
there was a story of the same name written by Stephen King, which was a great read. The concept is quite serious and very appropriate to drive this essay; the main characters brother was a genius who found that there was something in the water that caused people to act as fucked up as they do to each other, and it took a drastic measure to cause it to come to an end. Although this story took the world to a place that it really didn’t like, it was the drastic measure that relates this story to me. It is this drastic measure that is causing me to stand up and open the doors that I have, and I am here doing as much as I can to help remove the problems that are coming to fruition quite quickly.
Posted on November 28th, 2006 by Bob in Gneu Website
MSFSX - Performance update
As an update to the previous post, I spent the better part of yesterday tweaking the settings on MSFSX and had some good results, although nothing to write home about, I finally got the game up to and above 20fps. It only took my graphics card a day and a half to get used to the game. Im not very impressed still, but I found out how to tweak the airplanes and took an SR71 out into space… apparently they didn’t include a ceiling on the game. Very neat to see the planet like that in a flight simulator, although it took me a couple hours to get it back to flyable, and it didn’t like going Mach 49, apparently…
Posted on November 26th, 2006 by Bob in Game Review
Flight Simulator X not ready for the holiday season
For those of you have seen the commercial for it, since It’s been paired up with a bunch of flight related shows. This includes my new favorite Dogfights, which is amazing for those of you who are interested in seeing really nice computer graphics of flight simulations. There is an issue of Microsoft’s new version of their flight simulator, X. The reason that you should see the commercial before checking out the game is because believe it or not, the commercial shows the game playing at about 10 fps. I got my hands on a copy, and I have yet to be impressed.
Posted on November 25th, 2006 by Bob in Game Review
My GUI Designer is coming along
I just finished the key values class and its rolling pretty well. Lots of the same features as the one I wrote in C++ but this one I had the honor of designing, and design I did. The class in c# is has dynamic data structures, an array list, sorted list, writing this class over in C++ has been great because I got the chance to put some thought into an old data structure I hadn’t touched in a while.
Posted on November 22nd, 2006 by Bob in Application Development, Game Development
Keys && Values
the last couple days I have been working on a C++ class that is quite interesting, and inspired by Half Life 2. HL2 is highly dependant on key value paired files, everything from the weapons to the GUI to the keys are all handled with the same system of keys and values. I recently released an application, the mod manager, which is written in C# and handles the key value files fine. I’m now moving my GUI application to C++ since I want the application to be free of dependency to .net, and I have to work my C++ magic to get the files read properly.
Ill add the file to a repository here when its done.
Keep an eye out.
Posted on November 22nd, 2006 by Bob in Application Development, Game Development
Viewer Mail #1
Not all of you may know, according to a recent email about my current projects, but I am currently affiliated with the world at war mod. It is a war game fps that is based on the infamous HL2 Source Engine and has been all too much fun to jump back into. It is true however that my previous mods fell through, and the most important thing I learned from them was that you can’t get anyone to do anything they don’t want to do, unless you pay them.
Posted on November 20th, 2006 by Bob in Game Development, Gneu Website
Inline Functions
I am turning a lab in tonight that handles two very shady topics that have been only lightly touched upon in my previous classes: Bit manipulation and inline functions. Each deserves its own article because they are both complicated in their own right.
Bit manipulation is the process of manipulating bits. For those of you who are not IT inclined as of yet, a bit is a switch and every data type is made up of them. There are only bits in your computer, no such thing as an int, or char pointer, everything is a bit. The emphasis here is that everything is a bit and I cannot stress that more.
Posted on November 20th, 2006 by Bob in Application Development, Game Development