  Sunday : Also known as shower day. | 
Posted - 5/22/2005 2:39:02 PM | Not too much developement went on these past four days. I was lucky enough to get to spend that time with my son, as well as see Episode III which I have mixed feelings about. I'm just now sitting down to begin pinning over some code for an hour or so, at which point I'll have to go to work. It's funny, things seem to work out in the long run, if you keep with it, (except for genecide). I'm speaking of some personal family things, but compassion really does pay off. It's good to see it pay off just sometimes, even if 95% of the time it goes unnoticed. Oh, and all two year olds should be equiped with helments. My son kept running into stuff this weekend. Quality stuff.
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| preparation | 
Posted - 5/18/2005 1:18:26 PM | I spent about six hours reading yesterday. This is a good thing because I have about ten books that I recently bought that I have yet to read. The book I was reading was Visual C++ Goodies by various people from CodeGuru.com . Effectively the book is a collection of various articles from people on the website, and essentially gives ideas, practices, and code for getting some advanced features out of the MFC. Well, I personally am no fan of the MFC, but seeing as how I decided a little while ago to use them for my 2d editor Myrrh, this book is proving to be a valuable resource. I just thought I'd share that.
I'm finally getting back into a decent production schedule that allows me to dedicate at minimum four hours a day to my two projects. It feels good to be on a productive path again.
I recieved an e-mail a couple days ago in regards to an apprentice ship program that I had applied two as many as four months ago. It turns out the program is one that helps people get certified in AAA, MCSE, and a few other certifications, but the program cost $14,000 dollars. It's in association with Microsoft and Wells Fargo, and seems somewhat interesting, but I don't know if it's something that I want to pursue. I mean it's not really an apprenticship, it's more of a help you get certified program, with placement assistance. Granted it's cheaper then say the technical school that I attended a few years back, but in theory couldn't I just get the resources to take the test myself, and all for a lot cheaper then $14,000? Something I'll have to look into further.
I'm looking to relocate at the end of this year to an area where there is more of a game associated active community. Not really any that I know of here in Iowa, besides the stuff at the UNI's that are as many as 1.5 hours away, and even then I don't think that they have great communities. I was looking at possibly some Canadian destination. If any body has any ideas that they'd like to share with me on that, I'd be all eyes.
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| Reconfiguration | 
Posted - 5/17/2005 4:37:58 AM | I sat down yesterday to start working on developing the central process station for my NPC objects for C.F.L. Up until this point the initial frame work for the system has been in place, but I have yet to make it functional. It had been a few months sense I had really looked at my code, and I came across about four other segments that I had yet to finish. These segments were my battle system, and other parts of my chance system that have to do with random events such as bad luck, good luck, and a few others. So, I've been spending the last twenty four hours or so working on that, and I'm not even a third of the way finished. For these systems there are a large amount of switch statements that are picked according to a pseudo randomly generated number, for the battle system alone there are total of fourthousand. That's a lot of writing. Especially when I'm trying to make each of them as original as possible.
Creating a dynamic world isn't easy either. I've gone about attempting to simulate a more realistic world by having each NPC object, which there is about 75 in the game thus far, be able to fully interact with each other to the same extent that the player can, as well as the objects in the game world. The whole idea is to have the NPCs interact with the world based upon their own motives and interest, and have those motives and interest created in response to events that unfold each time the program is ran. IN essensce, each time the player takes a turn, a call to process NPC events is made, and based upon current game flags, individual NPC flags, weather conditions, and other such events, an action for each NPC is calculated and carried out. THis will hopefully cause for a unique gameplay experience for each individual player, within the rules of the game world. Once I finish with the other modules that I had forgotten about finishing, and I have this system in place, I will begin on creating further content for the game world.
A quick question for other developers : As far as creating the save modules for a game, do you generally create all your content first, and then your save modules? I personally for this game created my save and load modules along side my frame work. I have found this effective as if I need to modify information, I can simply go in and add additional information to be saved and loaded by simply adding additional objects. How do you guys go about it?
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| Insomnia | 
Posted - 5/15/2005 6:31:46 AM | For one reason or another, probably because my sleeping patterns are always a bit obscure, I haven't been able to get more then four hours of sleep at a time. This is alright as it has allowed me to make some good use of my time. I guess that doesn't quite qualify as insomnia, but , heh,. what are you going to do?
I took time this morning to begin refining the code base for C.F.L. to get ready to move it to from a console app, to Win32. I decided also that I will, for the time being, forego the transition to pure 3D, as the text interface to the game is something that I quite like. So, what will it be like instead?
The system that I am devising will kind of be like Myst in a way, but instead of a point and click interface the user will interact through the mouse and keyboard for navigation, and text for other interaction with NPC's and the trivia aspects of the game. I am still looking for help with some Models, and have yet to recieve a reply from my post in the help wanted section, or any e-mails, which is ok for the time being, but I'd like to have my migration completed by this time next month, at which point in time if I still don't have any models, I just go with using generic free ones as place holders.
I managed to pick up an extra computer last week. It's about a third of the power of my current box, but I plan to use it for some network testing and such.
DecipherOne's Words of Wisdom: If you can't make it out to the Star Wars premier this week, don't fret, it's not the end of the world. It will be there later, and you may actually enjoy being able to hear the movie without thousands of people flocking to the box office.
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| No rest for the weary. | 
Posted - 5/13/2005 4:59:58 AM | Hum.., well I thought I would take a moment to update my journal. I didn't spend as much time developing this week thus far as I had initially planned, but I was able to get started on the frame work for rendering components for phoenix and myrrh, which is a step in the right direction. It's unfortunate that it's taken me this long to get started on these classes and modules, but such is life. I am hoping to have most of this completed by the end of next week so that I can move on to creating my class templates for handling and mapping input.
If anyone out there is looking for an xbox for any reason, I now have an extra one laying around. It's enhanced so to speak. P.M. me if you're interested, and I'll give you more details.
I spent about a hundred dollars buying used books from amazon dot com a couple of weeks ago. I was able to get a total of 11 books for 120 I believe. Not a bad deal. It's funny though as out of all the books there is probably about a books worth of information that I would consider enlightening beyond my current threshold of knowledge. Good referrences though. I do wish there were better books written on the Win32 API though. I can generally find what I need to know, but there really isn't anything out there that is straight foward and comprehensive, and we all know the glorious ease of use of microsoft documentation; although it usually turns up I'm not using the correct phrase or keywords specifically, or I'm too specific. A catch 22 to remember. I suppose it adds a nobility to coding though, having to be humbled by searching for the answers instead of just having them put right in front of you. Kind of like life.
Moma always said that life was like Win32 API documentation.. you never know what your going to get.
DecipherOne's Words of Wisdom:
If you drink more then six mountain dews in three hours, prepare to drink six more, or prepare for time to stand still.
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| Comments | |
Posted - 5/7/2005 3:54:16 AM | Not really too much to report. I spent the better part of today doing some game related stuff, but it was for other people, which is cool, but not any progress on my projects to report.
I did however decide to take the route of developing my editor Myrrh, using MFC even though I've shied away from that route in the past. I guess I just don't see the need for invoking win API calls that are already readily available. This next week is hunker down time as I've already fallen behind in development, and if current trends continue, I'll be bound to miss my first bench mark. Well, not going to happen if I have any thing to say about it.
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| BIS | 
Posted - 5/3/2005 5:04:09 AM | Alright well, here is an attempt to resubmit the post that I was working on the other morning. Let's see if I can get this posted this time :)
Here is a summary of my current projects:
Phoenix & Myrrh
Phoenix is the name of the 2D engine that I am currently working on and Myrrh is the editing suite that will acompany Phoenix.
The whole concept is to have an abstract editor that allows for custom object and entity creation through abstraction and polymorphism through a python interface. Users will be able to create objects from base classes, as well as create their own custom classes. Myrrh will have a simple click and drag interface that will allow for scenes to be created and objects placed throughout the 2D worlds. The engine will use custom modules to load information created with Myrrh, which will use a custom file format to store all resources in a single or multiple module files.
C.F.L.
Conquest For Love is a game that has been in developement for over a year. It's currently a library which was developed for use in a text engine, but I have plans of using DirectX and Ogre to create a game in a 3D world. I'm fairly happy with where this has gone and will continue working on it throughout the next year.
This is a fairly short post compared to the inital one, but it gets the point across. I have barely began to explore Ogre but it seems very promising for rendering.
I've spent the better part of the past two days playing Jade Empire. It seems to use the exact same engines as Knights of the Old Republic, but I like the action RPG style of this game much more. I also like the story better as well. I've probably spent ten hours playing it the last two days, which has caused me to get no development time in, but what do you do. Keep playing is what I'll probably do. Not since Fable have I been so interested in a game. Another reason I think I'm interested is that the plot of the story is similair to a story idea that I had years ago, and I always thought it would make a great game. Turns out it does, and it's great to see philosphy in games, I don't think I've seen that enough. Well, back to JE I suppose. I plan on spending some time getting a code base up for C.F.L.3D sometime this week, and I'll share that with everyone once I do.
DecipherOne's Words of Wisdom
ALWAYS REMEMBER: REFRESH YOUR BROWSER BEFORE POSTING LARGE POSTS
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| Now with soothing ACTION, ACTION, ACTION! | 
Posted - 5/1/2005 5:18:10 AM | Well, I just wrote a hudge post about my two projects, and then my sister called with a family emergencey. I forgot to refresh my browser before posting, so it was erased, and now I have to go deal with a bunch of bs her boyfried is putting her through, and make sure he goes to jail for the night, two great things in a row..
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