Bellevue, WA
A journey from here to God knows where, with a few passengers along for the ride.
August 20, 2008
So I'm off at college now. It's an incredibly relief to finally get out of the house and have a little more independence. I love the campus here; Stevens Institute of Technology is located right on the Hudson river in Hoboken, NJ, across from downtown NYC. The view is breathtaking, especially at ni…
August 12, 2008
I've always found it odd that Visual Studio does not include a good source code statistics counter, at least not in the Express, Standard, or Professional editions (I can't speak for any other versions). It's a relatively simple thing to do, so when I looked around the internet I was rather surpris…
August 01, 2008
I absolutely love the way C# is progressing as a language. Whenever I get the chance to use some of the cooler features in a real life project, I can't help but feel proud and happy. Maybe it's just me. Does anybody else feel the same way?
During work on Asteroids, I came across the need for two age…
During work on Asteroids, I came across the need for two age…
July 24, 2008
Whenever I'm writing code I'm always thinking of ways to improve what I'm writing. Every once in a while I run across a bit of code that I know could be easier or look nicer or be more performant (which, incidentally, isn't even a real word), so I usually take a little time to clean it up and make …
July 13, 2008
I've been talking for the past few weeks about the SlimDX Sample Framework, and hearing design information is all well and good, but I'm sure most of you are thinking, "How well does it work in real life?" This was a primary concern for me as well, so I started work on a sample game as soon as the …
July 11, 2008
SlimDX Sample Framework - Timing
Timing is one of those topics everyone needs to worry about, no matter what kind of game you are making. Not only is timing a complex topic on its own, but it's one part of your software that is totally dependent on the quality and availability of almost undocumented…
Timing is one of those topics everyone needs to worry about, no matter what kind of game you are making. Not only is timing a complex topic on its own, but it's one part of your software that is totally dependent on the quality and availability of almost undocumented…
July 05, 2008
It seems like we get tons and tons of the same stupid crap here at GDNet, and every once in a while one of the crap posts turns into a flame war. I think it would be great if we had a standard response that we could just copy and paste right into the thread, ending all discussion and making things …
July 03, 2008
SlimDX Sample Framework - Resource Management
A constant worry in Direct3D9 applications is ensuring that all of your resources are properly initialized, disposed, and taken care of when a device reset occurs. Direct3D10 relieves a bit of this burden by removing device lost scenarios, but you still …
A constant worry in Direct3D9 applications is ensuring that all of your resources are properly initialized, disposed, and taken care of when a device reset occurs. Direct3D10 relieves a bit of this burden by removing device lost scenarios, but you still …
June 29, 2008
SlimDX Sample Framework - Device Management
The GraphicsDeviceManager is the very heart and sole of the sample framework. It handles the important task of managing a Direct3D device, and does so for both Direct3D9 and Direct3D10. Included with this system is the DeviceSettings class for specifying d…
The GraphicsDeviceManager is the very heart and sole of the sample framework. It handles the important task of managing a Direct3D device, and does so for both Direct3D9 and Direct3D10. Included with this system is the DeviceSettings class for specifying d…
June 24, 2008
I officially graduate tomorrow! Woohoo! Yay for me. It's been a long time since I've felt such freedom. Of course, in just a few short months I head off to college, but I expect to have a lot more fun there then I did in high school.
SlimDX Sample Framework - Overview
So we've been looking to make Sl…
SlimDX Sample Framework - Overview
So we've been looking to make Sl…
June 03, 2008
So we've been working on SlimDX for exactly one year and one month, according to the initial repository commit by Promit (of course, I didn't show up until two months later). The little library has grown astronomically since then, and we've had to redefine the meaning of "Slim" to match our current…
May 09, 2008
C++/CLI is a bag of mixed emotions for me. On the one hand, it takes the horrible mess that is C++ and tacks on some hacks to make it work with .NET. In other words, not pretty. On the other hand, it works perfectly as a glue layer between native code that everyone has lying around and C#, which is…
May 08, 2008
So I started working on a utility class library this past week. Once a wekk, I'm going to collect one of the utility classes I have scattered around my projects, clean it up, write up some documentation, and stick it into a general purpose library. Basically it will contain things that, in my opini…
April 30, 2008
One question that commonly comes up on the forums is that of image processing in .NET. The built in Bitmap class, while useful, is rather unwieldy, and the technique used to access individual pixels in a performant manner is non-intuitive.
I sat down to write a sprite editing program today, and the …
I sat down to write a sprite editing program today, and the …
April 23, 2008
Well, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here. Time seems to keep dwindling as the school year progresses. I've taken a break from my console project until after school ends for the summer, since that should give me a lot more free time to spare.
On a side note, SlimDX is starting to l…
On a side note, SlimDX is starting to l…
March 22, 2008
Well, I've jumped headfirst into assembly programming for the Propeller, and let me tell you it's been quite the radical change for me. On the one hand, I miss nice things like generic lists, exceptions, and OOP. On the other, assembly has some cool things built in that you just can't do with highe…
March 19, 2008
I finally got SOMETHING showing up on a TV screen. Granted, it doesn't do much yet, and doesn't look pretty either, but still, it's progress. At this point, I can safely assume that all of my hardware is hooked up correctly and that the layout on the breadboard isn't messing anything up. Time to mo…
March 13, 2008
It's time for "The Daily Funnies from Help Wanted". Let's go through this week's entries. Once the episode is over you are encouraged to phone in and vote for your favorite candidate!
CloverfieldGame - This guy wants to do a little copyright infringement, with a little IP abuse throw in for good me…
CloverfieldGame - This guy wants to do a little copyright infringement, with a little IP abuse throw in for good me…
March 08, 2008
Well, it's been a while since my last entry, so I figured I should spend the day getting back into my project. I was still trying to figure out to connect the damn NES controllers to the rest of the project. After scratching my head for a bit, I decided to solder them back into the Four Score and t…
February 25, 2008
Well, the posts have been rather lacking lately since we are getting down to the wire on SlimDX. We are hoping to get a release out within a few days of the March DirectX SDK release, so we are all working double time to make sure everything gets in.
This release is a huge one for us, and will proba…
This release is a huge one for us, and will proba…
February 20, 2008
First off, things have been busy lately, so I'm going to put off getting into the NTSC code until after things cool off.
So controllers.
Yes, our game console needs controllers. I had a few things to consider when I chose the controllers:
1) How many pins from the CPU will each controller take?
2) How …
So controllers.
Yes, our game console needs controllers. I had a few things to consider when I chose the controllers:
1) How many pins from the CPU will each controller take?
2) How …
February 16, 2008
There were a lot of questions about the interactions between Spin and ASM from the last entry. In case I wasn't clear, Spin does NOT compile down to Propeller ASM. It runs natively on the chip, through the use of a built in interpreter. Programs for the Propeller must use at least a few lines of Sp…
February 14, 2008
It's time for me to get up close and personal with the Propeller chip. As you already know from reading my earlier post, the Propeller chip has 8 independent cores running at up to 80MHz, although it can be overclocked for even higher speeds. The Propeller chip also has 32KB of main memory that can…
February 12, 2008
After receiving my Propeller chip the other day, I went to look through some of the stuff I already had to see if I could use any of it. Unfortunately, almost all of it was borderline worthless. No matter, a healthy dose of cash can cure any stuff-lover's blues.
First up on the list is the Propeller…
First up on the list is the Propeller…
February 11, 2008
Well, I started a new project a few weeks ago, and I decided that it would be cool to share some of it with the rest of GDNet. I've always been interested in low-level hardware stuffs; it's how I got into programming in the first place. So I decided that I would like to get back to my roots and cre…
October 20, 2007
I have been rather busy lately (as a side note, take a look at SlimDX, which is beginning to come together quite nicely), but I found some time this week to work on my star generation stuff.
I finally found the bug that was causing the weird effect I noticed in my last post, and I put some work int…
I finally found the bug that was causing the weird effect I noticed in my last post, and I put some work int…
October 07, 2007
I haven't posted in a while, so I decided to show some of the stuff I have been working on.
I have been following Greg Martin's awesome star tutorial, which details how to make a great looking star field background. I have been working on reproducing his method in C#, and here is what I have so far:…
I have been following Greg Martin's awesome star tutorial, which details how to make a great looking star field background. I have been working on reproducing his method in C#, and here is what I have so far:…
September 09, 2007
Woooooo! My first GDNet+ Journal entry. I am hoping that this journal may become an interesting read for a few people, but for now it serves quite nicely as a place to get my thoughts down.
I am going to introduce myself and hope that somebody says "hi". My name is, in case you haven't noticed, Mike…
I am going to introduce myself and hope that somebody says "hi". My name is, in case you haven't noticed, Mike…
Advertisement
Popular Blogs
Advertisement