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So, as I continue working on learning various web languages and working on continuing to learn Qt, I begin to notice a continuing trend of getting away from game development. This is something that I have to keep in mind in the future, but for now, current paths must be continued until the current journeys come to an end.
So, Ajax, Mysql, and php are the newest members to the arsenal of development tools in my tool box. I'm having quite a bit of fun getting to know them, working on the decipherone website. I'm also getting to know web standards in the process, which has been interesting. Although I've been using websites, I never really noticed how much the development process has changed for them over the last decade. It just goes to show my lack of education in the area prior to the last few months that I've been preparing to tackle the GoG tournament connection tool and building the community website to promote Troglodyte and indie games in general.
While it's interesting and practical , and I could see myself doing it for a living, I just don't have the time to continue to do web development, work on a game engine, design games, make games, work a full time job, and fit the other hats in my life on my head. As stated currently, I've had to set aside the game development aspect, and it's something that I really want to get back to. So as I finally come to the forks in the road, I need to get back to the initial cause.
It looks like April will be the month where I actually get time to port the current code base of the engine over to using Qt. As I do that I'm thinking that I am going to need to finish the game state management that still isn't complete at this time, before starting to build the next edition of Scribe, the editor. By that time the official release of Qt creator should be out as well, which should be awesome. Qt will also be releasing version 4.5 in march, which will add a LGPL license, which should help with marketability for Troglodyte.
At this point in time I'd like to say this. The main reason of this game engine and editing suite is to provide a tool for myself and fellow companions to make games, do it well , and fast. I'm choosing to release it to the public after an agreed upon time in between myself and the guys of Phyersoft. In doing so, my hope is not to become rich from the endeavor, although if that happens it would be welcomed. Instead, it's my hope to provide a very affordable tool that is easy enough for a complete newb to use, while still having enough power to entice seasoned developers.
By having it be open source as well, I'm hoping that it give those who are interested in coding a good place to begin to learn about programming games. That is also the purpose of the website. Also, I hope to grow as a programmer because for the most part I'm self taught and I'd love for those who would be interested in looking at the code base to be able to offer and make suggestions.
In addition, I'd love to see people become passionate about the project and for it to grow into a robust development tool owned by the global community. Only time will tell if these hopes and dreams will be attained, but it should be an interesting journey to get to cultivation of the ideas.
Well, I've certainly done an excellent job of focusing on blogging :P At any rate, I am hard at work on things as per usual. I'm working to learn Qt still, attempting to work through the C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 book that I purchased at the beginning of the month. I want to get through the entire thing before moving forward with porting the engine code over to making use of Qt. I figure it could be March before that process is completed.
It would be faster, but I'm also working to development a tournament tool for GatheringofGamers.com . This is going to be taking a lot of time up as it's turning into a rather large project as time goes on. It's been fun to design though and I can't wait to start developing it. I'm currently in full fledged R&D mode still, but as I work with the other site developers to polish the design, work on building it should pick up within the next couple of weeks.
In the mean time as I do research for this project, I'm moving forward with adding some functionality to the decipherone.com website. I added some basic news submission to the site and will be adding some more stuff in the coming weeks.
In other news, after my rant about Microsoft last post, I'm now the proud owner of an XBox 360. I spent quite a bit of time gaming the first few days I got it and have managed to put in an hour or so every couple of days, which is more gaming then I've done in a long time. I have to say I'm fairly pleased with it so far and with the exception of the payment system, am fairly impressed with Xbox Live as well. Dead Space is also an excellent game.
This is the first blog post of 2009. I'm excited to be in a new year and am looking forward to making this the most successful and productive year yet. Last year there was a pretty steady increase in my blogging habits. I ended up with 48 which averages out to one post a week. This year I have a blogging goal of 100, all rich with useful information in content.
So, I've been diving into the world of Qt the last few days, and so far, I have to say that I'm very impressed. I've been looking for an alternative to MFC on windows for a long time, but never really wanted to get into .net coding. It has also been a goal to make Troglodyte cross-platform from the very beginning, but I was never really sure how to do it. While I currently don't have a Linux or Mac box to compile my projects on, using Qt at least provides the frame work for me to be able to do so in the future.
In addition to using Qt, I'm also in the process of learning their custom IDE Qt Creator and I have to say I like it very much so far. It's still in Beta, but it's pretty functional. The IDE can be setup to use various compilers, but comes setup with the GNU GCC, which I haven't messed with since I first started to learn C++ six years ago. I have to say I'm fairly pleased with the compiler as well.
I've been wanting to get away from Microsoft specific products for sometime for various reasons. Don't get me wrong. I like the products that Microsoft makes. I've enjoyed using visual studio for the length of time that I have, but what I have never really liked is how Microsoft has seemingly set out to Monopolize the markets that they are in. Collaborative work and allowing others to learn from what you have done allows for true progress to be made. While Microsoft has gotten a little better due to pressure from government agencies and users themselves, it still seems like things will always be in a certain light from Microsoft. I'll continue to use Microsoft products such as windows(as long as the Windows7 doesn't go the way of the vista) and as a software developer will be required too as it's still the major piece of the market pie.
The main reason for wanting to switch however is simply to be able to cater to the rest of the market. As well as use tools with little to no restrictions that I don't have to worry about licensing issues and I can share with the community that I'm hoping to build around the game engine. In addition Qt Creator is light weight and provides support for C++ which is the only language that I develop in, besides python.
So, as I've been learning Qt, I have to say that I'm very impressed. There is functionality put into these collection of libraries that will not only allow for simple cross-platform compilation and serialization issues, but also allow for things such as resolution of localization issues and rapid application development. I'm hoping that this will cut down development time on the editor by more then half.
The website is still coming along, as well as the tournament connection system for the GoG. I'm going to try and get the majority of the remaining design knocked out for that system today. It's great to finally have a couple of consecutive days off from work to get things done.
Yay! Server is back online and so am I, with a dedicated connection. This will be a good thing heading into the new year and should allow for things to continue to move forward. I was thinking of doing a year end review but I'm not sure if it'd really be all that beneficial for anyone. I mean, I reflect enough as it is and it seems like everyone is talking about year end wrap ups or recaps and, well good for them.
I've started work back on Barricade currently. I'm working to finish some of the game mechanics that I did not finish during work on the proto-type. I worked on it a couple of days last week and some decent headway.
I switched back to this for two reasons. One, I decided to port my existing code base over to Qt in order to get things independent of a specific OS. This will allow for the editor to be cross platform as well as the engine itself and will hopefully open up a wider user base.
I've never used to Qt before, but I'm getting the supposed manual and am going to start learning sometime in the next month. In the meantime, I decided to work on the Barricade demo some more. The second reason being, I have not been able to make a solid decision on the next iteration of the engines state management. I've gone through at least 3 redesigns this year, with the core system staying some what the same, but the implementations being very different. I need to buckle down and just make a decision for this as it's been holding back progress from other areas for quite sometime now.
On a more personal note, I usually find it hard to focus around this time of year, and this year is no exception. It's almost tormenting to simply want to put everything off until the new year and just go out and live it up with everyone, but there's times and places for those things, not every day.
Blurry blurry vision, it's not as cool as it sounds believe it or not. Sure you see a big purple spot every where, but it makes it hard to read and to tell the difference between certain colors. Not really handy when your trying to put some new ends on a cat 5 cable. So, I experienced this last Monday and Tuesday. I finally decided to go to the doctor for the first time in six years after it didn't go away. The doctor sent me to a specialist, and after some test, they discovered that I have a condition called Central Serous Chorioretinopathy. It's an eye decease that effects mostly white males ages 25 to 45 and it causes retinal fluid to leak into the front part of the eye and causes warping of the pigmentation. This can lead to fun things like retinal detachment, or permanent visual defects. It's apparently caused by a reaction in the small single cell layer that separates the fluid and solid parts of the retina, brought on by a reaction to too much epinephrine( adrenaline for we simple folk), and is somewhat of a medical mystery.
The good news is that I should get most of my vision back and with some precautions, a the chance of a recurring episode can be greatly reduced. The bad news is that if it does happen again, the likely hood of permanent damage greatly increases. I go back to the doctor next Tuesday for a follow up to make sure the liquid has recessed and that everything is healing.
More troubles, except this time, in the server front. I have to assume that the server was some how cracked, because before this Monday, there was no trace of a problem, and I hadn't downloaded anything in months to the server. On Monday of this week however, I discovered that when trying to access the forums at decipherone.com, the forum software was generating an error message saying it was unable to connect to the database. I finally had some time to look into the problem after getting home from work late last night. Tenga.A virus anyone? If you want some I can send you any one of the exes on the server because they are all infected. Which after doing some research seems odd, because apparently there are patches for it in XP from service pack 2 up, and I have service pack 3 installed. I didn't get it, but now I get to spend this weekend reformatting the server and loading all the software back on it and setting up some new security precautions.
Well troubles are said to come in threes I heard one time, and I know of another problem that I won't discuss for reasons I leave a mystery, but the good news is life moves on. I really wish my work on the engine would though, but life keeps seeming to throw me some distractions that have to be taken care of first.
There has been quite a bit going on since my last post. I moved last week, downtown, into a new apartment, which is quite nicer then the last place I was staying. The building is older, but it's kind of interesting to be in one of the first buildings built in the state. I haven't had any ghosts visit me, but that's all good and well I suppose as I don't think I really know how to entertain ghosts. I'm also finally not in a basement apartment, which I had been the last two before this one. Instead, I'm on the top floor and there's an awesome view of some trees and downtown streets from my many windows. Which is all well and good, it did suck having to move all my shit up four flights of stairs though. Many thinks to Dan and Sam for helping me move my stuff.
As I get settled I'm hoping to really get focused back on getting the engine to the 1.0 bench mark for beta by the end of the year. As I've been writing about for a while now, I haven't really been as focused as I should be. The good news however is that I really feel at home in the new place and feel a lot of focus starting to come my way.
I'm also really wanting to finish the Barricade Proto-type to showcase the engine and want to start working on my personal game project. With things being so close to completion I've found it really hard to stay the course, but after coming this far, it wouldn't make any sense to give up.
Work on the website needs to continue as well, although I'm thinking that it will take a back seat the engine now, which wasn't the approach I was taking the last few months. There's still a lot of work to do there, but things will be completed with time.
Not really much more to write as of now.
I am spending way too much time reading and posting on forums these days. It's good to see all the great projects going on over at tigsoucre, but there is just so much information there that I've missed out on that I'm trying to catch up with that I'm easily spending two hours a day reading the forum posts. Plus working on my website and having various other things going on, I really need to refocus.
The server for the website will be down for a short amount of time as I'm going to move it on Thursday to a temporary place. Not that anyone goes to my site anyways, because there's not a lot to see there yet, but just in case someones wondering.
Source control is something that I neglected for quite sometime due to some issues that I had a few years ago with using Microsoft Source Safe. I'd asked some fellas over at gamedev.org a little while ago about what they were using as I have plans to get some additional help with projects in the near future and was wanting to look into again.
After looking at some of their suggestions I decided on Subversion , and I finally downloaded it to the server and started working with it today. At first it was kind of a struggle because even though the documentation is pretty thorough, it leaves out some important details. It seemed no matter what phrases I was typing into google, I couldn't find any other documentation.
It wasn't until I entered the phrase subversion walkthrough that I actually found some sites that help me get it up and working. Mainly Video How To: Getting Started with Subversion and Source Control was what I looked towards for some straight forward answers. It's a really well made tutorial for anyone looking to start using subversion on windows and it also introduced me to the GUI command tool Tortoise which is way better then simply using the command line interfaces.
I'm pretty happy with the experience so far, and am glad that I can now have access to things remotely as well. Now to actually get some coding done.
It's been a little while since I last wrote anything in here. What have I been up too, work mostly at the day job, but aside from that, I've been working on getting the website going. Really that's about all I've had time for, creating content, and I'm finally starting to deal with databases again for the first time in about six years, and starting to dabble with some php. It seems like I've been writing a lot also, but about what I'm not sure as it doesn't seem like I've actually produced a whole lot.
I'm also getting ready to move again, this time into a house finally. So things might be slow for a while a yet, but things are always moving in the background. I have forums up and running http://www.decipherone.com/community but odds are if you're reading this blog, you may already know that.
More as news develops at 10.
The month of June 2008 has come and gone already. Half of one orbital rotation has been completed and we are our on our way into the second half. As this begins, I think that it's important for me to reflect for a minute on things that have transpired this year. To see where it is that I am heading and to take note on where things need to change in order for more positive outcomes to be realized.
I was blessed enough to receive a job this year that has allowed me to hold true to completing obligations as well as fund my hobbies and personal business endeavors. It can be easy to forget where one comes from and to take for granted what one has when it becomes a part of ever day life and begins to seem less then extraordinary. The perception of course is wrong. It's something that I have to keep in mind as flight through the cosmos continues this year, and something that I think I should remind myself of, each and every day.
Family is also something that can start to be taken for granted. It's important to have family because they are the ones that help to keep us honest, that we share our triumphs and falls with. They are the ones that let us know when we are acting like a fool, even if we can't see it, and that help pick us up after we have had a bit of misfortune. When things start getting comfortable, it can be easy to forget just how important family is. They are the magnetic poles that guide our moral compasses.
Health is an area where I have been lacking in this year. I was doing well with taking care of myself for the first quarter, but once things starting getting a little unorganized, I allowed myself to fall into a pattern of little to no physical activity. This is bad for me as exercise has always been a huge way for me to relieve stress. This could potentially lead to other problem areas, which in turn could effect the other areas of my life that I've already reflected on. This is something that I've been making a note to change in my mind, but haven't really put forth an effort to remedy. If I don't get serious in this area, I fear it could have some adverse consequences.
I have not accomplished as much as I should have at this point with the game engine this year. At first my time was eaten into by other areas of my life such as work. But for the last three months or more, it's been mostly due to laziness and failure to structure my time to be productive. Granted, I have made some headway, but it hasn't been enough. I have failed to set consistent goals and know that I should have been doing more. Dedication in this area is a must if things are to be ready by the end of this year to move forward into what will be the second phase of my business endeavors. (which I will write more in about in the coming months)
I've been thinking a lot about my goals, community, and my future lately. Essentially, I've given myself five years to make it on my own from nothing to indie game development company. At the end of the five year period I plan on not giving up, but instead taking a more traditional method of academia, because at that point I'll have proven that I can't do it on my own. If things don't change, I'll be sitting here five years from now in too much of a similar position. Except I'll be having to take out loans to take a bunch of classes. I don't like being in debt for any reason, especially to learn(something that should be available to everyone if they want it, at an inexpensive cost, if not free)
Over the next few weeks, I'll be working to get back into a productive schedule that includes exercise and a minimum amount of time to work on things. I'm also working to develop a full fledged website and community to surround the game engine also, so time structuring will become more and more important as we come closer to the engine reaching it's first release phase, and the website officially going live.
This week has been an interesting one. I've spent the better part of it with my son, which has been a blast. I took the week off from work and with the exception of a few days he's pretty much been by my side most of the time. Sadly, I don't really remember the last time I got to spend such consecutive time with him, but I don't think I've ever had a better vacation.
On the server front, I ended up abandoning ubuntu as I was spending way to much time managing system resources and setting things up. Damn it Jim, I'm a programmer, not a full time systems admin. It was just way too involved for the things that I wanted to do and the time that it would have taken to get everything going just how I wanted. So, I ended up re-installing windows and simply going with an Abyss server app. Now, I'm very pleased with Abyss so far very user friendly and easy to use. I also got setup with a dns redirect for decipherone.com and now we're in action. I just have to write all the stuff that I need for the website and PLOW! no more paying outrageous prices for hosting and or renewing or registering domains with over priced registrars. Thanks Google, enom,, and
Dyndns.org
In engine news, I finally finished the directinput functionality for the engine. So now you can use 360 controllers and generic controllers at the same time, as long as the developer puts interfaces to it in the game that they are creating. I started getting the GUI class fleshed out last night, but I'm guessing that it's still going to take me a while to get that finished up. There's just a lot of functionality to consider when writing a full fledged GUI. It'll be good to get it going though and be able to get the editor more object based. Currently it's written as an object simply called Editor and all the drawing for the menus and everything is done directly in functions in the class. This is bad. It works, but it kills frame rates. I'm also looking into using FBO to turn text files into textures once the text is read into the engine. Currently it simply reads from the file each pass and writes the bitmaps fonts to the screen each pass. This is very inefficient. Lots more to come.
Sir Galahad was the knight who successfully found the Grail. A king among men. We should all strive for such greatness.
So, I spent the better part of the day and night messing with the server. I had forgotten about a problem that I had noticed about a month ago when I was assembling most of the parts to begin with. It wasn't until about three failed attempts of installing the latest build of Ubuntu that I remembered it. You see the case that I currently have for the server is arranged in such a way that the cpu is kind of close to the power supply. Granted, that this might not normally be a problem (although still a bad design in my opinion) but in my case, the fan that I have over the cpu is pretty massive. It's about 2 1/4 inches resting on top of a 4 inch heat reduction coil. Now, this is good for cooling purposes, but bad when there is only about a 1/4 inch gap between the fan and the power supply. In my haste to get things going I suppose I put it off in my mind.
Needless to say, this caused the psu to overheat. Now for some reason, I was thinking, "what is going on, is the damn thing overheating," but I couldn't remember why. It wasn't until I opened up the case to make sure the cpu fan was working that it dawned on me that I had forgot about the problem. So, I had to do some temporary adjustments and the psu is now resting on the bottom of the case for time being, with the case open. This took care of the problem for the time being, and the system is no longer freezing up. It's kind of funny though, I don't normally get that excited about things, and here I was just blowing off a problem with the system. Well, I thought it was funny anyways.
So, I'm either going to have to do some custom cutting to the case to get something worked out, or I'm going to have to get a new case. I have some tin snips, so I think I'm going to try some custom work to the case first, but if that doesn't work out, I found a decent case on-line for under $50. It'll have to wait a few months though as there are more pressing purchases to make in way of summer clothes for the kid, car insurance payments, and a portable air conditioner for where the computers are so that they don't over heat this summer.
My thoughts on Ubuntu Linux so far, after spending about five hours messing around and setting it up are, I like the interfaces a lot, I haven't really gotten to do a whole lot as I spent time downloading updates and just getting familiar with basic file structures and the like. I also downloaded Boinc to run Seti so that I could free up my dev box from it, so hopefully it'll have a little longer life. One thing I'm not liking though is the inability to access things as a root user without having to do some sort of working around. I suppose it keeps inexperienced people from screwing things up, but it seems like over kill in the area of protection. I would assume that anyone who can manage to work around the system the way that it is setup to emulate a root user, they could still screw things up just as bad, even unintentionally, but I guess it would take a little bit more work. At any rate, it's going to be an ongoing learning process. I just have to make sure it doesn't get in the way of working on the engine as well. Long day tomorrow.. err.. today. I better get some sleep.
It's flooding all over the state of Iowa right now, including here in Des Moines. I happen to be in an area with higher elevation, so I pretty much have lucked out so far and haven't felt the wrath of nature directly. I have however been witness to the many people who have not been as fortunate and who are losing their homes, access to their work, and even some people being separated from their families. If anyone reads this blog, and you happen to be the praying type, I'd ask that you do so now for those people who are having their worlds shaken up. At the same time I realize it's not like similar things aren't going on in the rest of the world, it just makes you take notice even more when it happens to hit close to home.
Speaking of weather, I've been kind of under it the last few days. I've had something of a fever and upper respiratory infection, so I've been kind of unmotivated to get things done. Not that I haven't felt that I wanted be motivated, in-fact, yesterday I attend the local Game Developer Forum Meeting, and today I completed assembling the server, and even now I'm taking the time to write in this here blog, but I've just felt un-motivated. I just hope to get back to feeling normal soon, but I suppose, just like the rain, all I can do is wait it out.
A few days ago, I did manage to complete the side by side XInput and DirectInput implementations for the engine. I also started working on a new test app, or rather a more polished demo showing recognized presses and the like for both generic and 360 controllers. I still need to finish that however. I am then going to tackle finishing up the GUI classes for the engine, which will probably end up taking me a little bit longer then I like, but it'll be a good experience.
I also decided to install Ubuntu as the os for the server. This will be good as I'll finally have a dedicated installation of Linux that I can start to code for, and work out serialization and windowing issues in regards to cross platforming for the engine. Although at this point it's not really a concern, but it's something to look forward to.
At any rate, I'll be spending time building up some resources for the server over the next few months. I'm not going to rush it, as I'm hoping to do some more professional things with the inter-web, and I also have a lot to learn in the way of the operating system, databases, server sided scripts, and server administration in general. I think I'm going to turn in early to try and get to feeling better, and to get an early start on things.
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