Continuous Refinement

I'm pleased to announce that the GDNet+ member webspace is now fully back online - and, for the first time in about 3 years, accessible by FTP once more!

Just FTP into members.gamedev.net, using your regular username and password, to access your personal space. Old GDNet+ members should find all their files ready and waiting for them. We've...

For the past three days or so, I've taken some time away from working on V5 to see if there aren't some things I can do for the current site, V4. As you're no doubt aware, we're in a bit of a tight spot on cashflow right now - much like everyone else in the industry - so I figured I'd see if there wasn't anything I could do to bring down our...

Today's chocolate-chunk-o'-LINQ:


public ActivityLogEntry[] GetActivitiesFiltered(DateTime? startTime, DateTime? endTime, Uri[] actors, Uri[] actorTypes, Uri[] objects, Uri[] objectTypes, Uri[] verbs, int? maxToFetch)
{
using(var context = new ActivityEntities())
{
var entries =...

At the moment I'm working on the code for managing user accounts. This encompasses logging into accounts, creating new accounts, changing your password, and so on. There are some interesting features and design requirements that make this a non-trivial thing to do, so maybe it'll be interesting for you to read about it.

Federated Identity: A...

Well, I could tell you, but maybe it'd be easier just to show you.

(Let me know if you get any errors out of it. I'm aware of two issues at the moment: one, that ads don't load in IE; and two, that sometimes a page displays a generic 'something went wrong' message which goes away when you refresh. I'm fairly sure the second is something to do with an...

Here's a little something that had me stumped for 15 mins. The info on the net about it is pretty sparse so maybe this will help somebody.

I was trying to install the GDNet service processes on the backend server. Every service process needs its own user account - it makes security, auditing, and SQL Server access a lot neater. Normally when you...

Now that Pulse is churning away at the codebase, I've spent time today doing further tidying of the build and deploy process. Once the site goes live I want to be able to get changes deployed quickly and safely, and I want to be able to start deploying builds for the Staff to look at within the next few days, so I'm doing what I can to get the pipeline...

I spent a bit of time recently doing some work on V5's build pipeline, implementing continuous integration and making the deploy-to-servers process a bit more formal. Unlike most web developers, I'm a big fan of pre-deployment testing and verification, so a well-established build process is a key part of that.

Continuous Integration, for those who...