15 hours ago, Lactose said:

Could you elaborate on this one?

Sure, I'll give it a shot. Different training systems did different things, but they generally had multiple elements involved in finalizing a student's score.

Let's say you're training a tank crew. During one training exercise you're going to track the equivalent of an accuracy score on targets destroyed, how long it took to do different maneuvers, identify targets, and so on. That specific exercise may have scoring requirements specific to the training intent of the exercise.

Typically these systems also have an instructor (although we experimented with self-instruction), and from their instructor seat (Instructor Operator Station, or IOS), they are going to annotate the score with their own observations for what the crew did. The Instructor gets a fully relayed view of each crew's views and typically some type of "God" view.

The individuals in the crew may be scored independently as crew members as well as a collective crew.

And over the course of a full curriculum, your next exercise progression may depend on how well you score in prior exercises. Gates are defined and must-pass, but your score from the first 3 exercises may impact the type of training you receive in the 4th exercise.

It becomes a fun multi-dimensional matrix where scoring isn't just what you did individually during runtime, but also how your team members did, how the instructor thinks you did, how you did in previous exercises, and all that may determine what you do in the future.

A lot of this was driven by customer requirements, but some of the more complex areas of scoring were our own experimentation to improve retention and training time, which ended up being successful.

The engine/tools we developed allowed a fair amount of this at the exercise level to be implemented through visual scripting / equivalent of blueprints. This allowed non-engineer domain experts - the training Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) - to define training directly using their expertise, instead of relying on translating knowledge in their domain into requirements that a software engineer could understand and then implement.

17 hours ago, khawk said:

Sure, I'll give it a shot.

Interesting. Thanks.

At an early age I was introduced to the ZX Spectrum 48K+, and pretty much grew up with the home computer scene rather than the Nintendo/Sega one.  I remember trying to learn Basic and "G.A.C" but for a young child trying to learn programming on such machines it was a bit of a piss in the wind, really.  To get the best out of those 8 bit machines you had to write them on more powerful machines such as the Amiga, and yet it would be years later when we did get such a machine - a 486 SX PC.  To jump overnight from Dizzy and The Hobbit to Monkey Island and Wolfenstein3D was like jumping into a Delorian and setting the timer forward 20 years.  The 90s truly was the era where digital entertainment made a qauntum leap forward, where in the process empires would rise and fall.  3D polygon graphics, CD roms, rapid adoption of the internet and even CGI in movies made for a very busy decade.

In 2000 I got off my ass and taught myself to program for real.  In that time I never entered the computing industry but programming is very much central to my life, and feel proud of having pushed myself much further than I ever dreamt I could.  I think its important to keep hold of what inspired you because ultimately its what drives you forward.  The more you distance yourself from that, the less point you see in continuing.

When I was born, the doctor accidentally handed me a computer keyboard. It took only a few seconds for him to realize the mistake he had made but it was too late; I had already logged on to thegamecreators.com and downloaded DarkBASIC Classic, a horribly written software package for developing DirectX 7 based games in the BASIC language. I spent the next 6 years of my life learning the unfathomable number of quirks of DarkBASIC instead of learning how to walk and interact with other humans. My parents were worried, so they bought me a football. Finally, I had a chair to sit on and write games properly.

After having worked on over 200 projects, I realized how bad DarkBASIC was, so I downloaded Ogre3D 1.7.8 and compiled it in 2 hours. I had no idea what the hell was going on. C++ was difficult and strange and really, really complicated. The next 5 years were all C++ centered, I learned the language, I developed a multitude of different applications but still haven't made a single game yet, even to this day. Somehow, C++ has made me worry about all of the little things that didn't matter in DarkBASIC: Design patters, memory considerations, build systems, unit testing, performance considerations... I am being bogged down by all of this crap and it is preventing me from just having fun and writing games. This is what I miss most about DarkBASIC, as horrible as it was.

Hi there guys and gals.

Well, I'm old.

I had a C64 as a kid in the 80's, I entered code and saved my programs on tape.

In the late 90's I started coding again, learnt C/C++/Java and bought a Sony Net Yaroze (Hobbyist Programmable PS1).

Obviously it was a hard system for a beginner but in 2001 on a uni break, I got 3D animated people going.. it was very cool in a really geeky way.

I didn't tell anyone, it was my guilty pleasure.. video games were toys back then.

I finished uni, got a job as a java/DBA developer, bought a house, etc.

2016, I revisited the Net Yaroze and made a 3D FPS.. it was cool.. now I'm programming the Nintendo 3DS (not homebrew) same vibe and community!

I'm still a noob.. I'm not a 'not invented here' guy, but I like knowing how things work, or at the least being about to trace through it!

I'm a programmer, I like to code and build tech, it's an art to making it all work.. and not crash

4 hours ago, haanuman said:

That gives me some solid motivation I hope you are doing well.

Cheers matey.  Yeah, just working on a small Android game for my phone and will try and get it on the play store at some point.  Even if only one person downloads it and leaves a really crap review, but has no issues running the game...I'll be over the moon!