Ever get bored at work and think, “I bet I could take some of those big plack paper clips, and some rubber bands and figure out how to shoot a pencil through a Coke can”? Well, apparently someone did, and here is the result. Kind of fun to look around their site as well.
OfficeGuns. Link via Gizmodo
Well, I can’t say I feel too sorry for the guy. I spend a good bit of my time trying to keep my server spam free (or at least I used to, now i just forward mail for all of my accounts to gmail, and let them figure it out). So, maybe you will be getting a little bit less spam now.
I doubt it.
To wrap up the day, the 5 “presenters” sat at the front of the room and allowed us to ask some questions (both stupid and not as stupid) to which they would have to try to provide answers to without looking stupid.
Rory graced us with his presence, and then proceeded to interrupt the introductions with his question. Once his question was answered, he promptly packed his bags and walked out. All the pressure of being famous I guess.
Most of the questions seemed to revolve around how to make money from game development, and most of the answers seemed to be “good luck, loser”. The panel did a good job of explaining that the game-dev market is very hard to break in to, and its quite difficult to publish your own games these days without a substantial chunk of cash. It was mentioned that the shareware model is still quite viable though, and can bring in a little bit of cash now and then.
The best thing is that there is one other person that seems to play Guild Wars. I think he may in fact be the only person that I have met face to face that plays this game. What a shame.
This session was a fun way to end the day.
Andy is a very interesting individual. He recently quit his job at Microsoft, and has decided to live on savings for a year while he tries to break into the gaming industry. Furthermore, if this doesn’t work out, he seems fairly confident that he can get re-hired by Microsoft. He must be good.
I was late to the after-lunch session yet again, due to the a bit of slow restaurant service. When I walked in Andy was knee deep in some stuff that was clearly over my head, and I was barely grasping at some of the concepts. I was relieved only by the fact that when he asked questions, everyone else was silent too.
Most of the presentation was getting down and dirty with HLSL. It was indeed impressive how little HLSL code could be written to insert lights, textures, etc into shader that could then be used to affect a scene. Andy stepped through re-creating the fixed function pipeline functionality of the graphics card (at least I think so, he kept saying things and then appending “…of course” onto the statement, making me feel a bit ignorant). In the end, he made it look rather simple, though I don’t think I could go and do it again on my own.
While the subject was a bit over my head, the presentation was excellent and enjoyable. Off to the Game Dev Panel.
This talk was one I was really looking forward to, as I find AI in games really fascinating. Chris certainly did not disappoint in another concept-based talk.
Much of the presentation focused on the different components of AI (Fear, Hunger, Morale, Loyalty, Greed, etc) and how they are created in reaction to stimuli around the creature. He explained how many more components may be thrown into AI to make it more interesting, such as contention between races, and how to calculate certain reactions based on different AI characteristics.
Chris has authored his own ASCII based RPG, Heroic Adventure using VB.NET. After some bad luck with his intended demo (which he warned us was not working as intended before unleashing it on us), he demonstrated some AI that was worked into his own game (after dying several times without leaving the first room).
This talk led to lunch and made for a very informative and fun morning.
I arrived promptly at 8:55 for this first Sunday session. There were now 3 of us in the room, and one of us was the presenter. Well, that’s what you get for being the first speaker after the “Nerd Crawl” that surely kept people out way later than the “I want to be up for Jason’s talk at 9:00 tomorrow” time. By the time we started the talk 5 minutes late, there were probably half a dozen people in the room. Lucky for me, I was one of the 2 that didn’t have David Weller’s book “Beginning .NET game programming in VB.NET”, so I received one of the 2 copies that were to be given away for that session.
This was probably my favorite talk. Jason has taken a unique approach to keeping separate components of his game informed of what other components are doing by using a central message processor. It was revealed that he hates using .NET events, and prefers his self-rolled message processing approach.
This approach allows each component to send messages to the message processor, which will in turn send them to all components that have subscribed to that particular type of message. By using this de-coupled architecture, it would be very easy to add additional components into the game, and allow them to hear the messages of the other components, without touching a single line of code in any of the other components. None of the components need to know what other components may be listening to its messages.
Jason concluded by showing us his own creation, tanks 0.0.3 very beta. He also talked briefly about hooking into a 3rd party physics engine to provide the physics for his project, and about using baretail for logging.
I think this was my favorite talk due to my general noobishness with DirectX, and the focus on concepts rather than specific examples. A great way to start the morning.
I of course didn’t know what to expect in this talk, since there was absolutely no description given for the session, but I knew there would always be good times when Rory is presenting.
Inform is a tool that was made to do one thing, and one thing only. It’s a language to make text adventure games. If you have ever played one of these games, then you know how ridiculous they can sound at times, and that is when the developer is trying to be serious. We, of course, weren’t.
We created a simple text adventure game that consisted of having to retrieve a golden fish without being attacked by the “magical living golden lute monster”. We needed this fish, of course, to give to Rory gave out his “swag” in the form of autographed Tazo Tea Kits which he hurled across the room as a reward for asking good questions.
Well. Hmm…
It appears to be very easy to script actions in tribes.
Yep. This is one of those “If you don’t have anything nice to say…” times…
Maybe you can ask George…
We were a few minutes late coming back from lunch, so I missed the first few minutes of this talk. Naturally I didn’t know what to expect here. As we ate lunch, there was quite a lot of speculation as to what type of talk this may be, and in fact what color the balls may be.
Jason’s talk mostly focused on physics and collision detection. His application consisted of a surface with some pool/striped balls that would drop from the sky at the whim of the user, and as they collided, cause a chain reaction which would send balls in all directions. Jason pointed out some of the roadblocks he had run into when trying to do collision detection in 3 dimensions, and how using a single axis partitioning scheme would reduce the collision detection load exponentially.
At one point, Jason started playing with the window with his mouse (as probably most geeks do…. we must have some sort of interaction with the computer at all times.) , and they noticed that the balls seems to react to window movements. Very, very cool. Well, it turns out this is a bug. the longer you hold down the mouse, the more the balls gain downward force (due to gravity) and the more they “bounce” upward when you let go. I blame Windows, for not processing messages while dragging a window.
All in all this was a very cool talk. The demo was very flashy, and demonstrated the point well.
So, a bit bewildered from the first session, I make my way back to the lecture hall for Chris’s talk. I’m not really sure what to expect here, 2D gaming is pretty broad.
He starts out showing a demo of exactly what he has done, which is the main focus of his talk. Chris, it turns out, has written a program called Warplanner that allows multiple people to play this game with each other over the net.
Chris had a demo of some basic 2D DirectX work using DirectDraw. As Jason pointed out, this is a deprecated namespace, but the demo was still worthwhile. The next item on his agenda was how his network play worked. He made the mistake of asking Jason about some terminology for a “lounge” in DirectPlay to which he got a “I don’t know, I don’t use deprecated namespaces” answer. Ouch, heckled again.
Throughout the presentation Chris showed a really slick replay feature that would allow you to go back to any point in the game, and replay some or all of the moves. I have to say watching it was pretty impressive.
All in all this was a good talk, and made even better by Chris’ enthusiasm for his project.
OK, so here we are in our first session of code camp. Fresh from *not* winning the X-Box (if they could have told me I wouldn’t win before I got there, I could have slept another few minutes…), I knew we were surely not going to hear a standard Microsoft marketing presentation, because they told us specifically in the “Welcome to Code Camp” that we would not be hearing any of this at this Non-Microsoft-sponsored-but-payed-for-by-Microsoft-non-Microsoft-code-camp event.
Hmm, it seems that our friend David here missed that part. A good part of his talk was very marketingy (if that’s not a word, then it should be, because there is not a good word to describe “something that is marketing like”). One of the “students” had to call him on it, and get him rolling through his slides.
The major gem in this talk was his demo of PIX. If you don’t know what it is, use Google. I’m too lazy to do the search for you and provide a link to some useful material. I will, however, explain it in my own words. PIX is kind of like a DirectX debugger. You can record all of the DirectX information about an entire length of a scene, a single frame, etc. The really cool part is what you can do with that information. For each frame, you can step through each of the DirectX API calls, and see what is happening on the screen. You can watch as it draws the background, textures it, and then proceeds to draw each layer on top of it. Essentially you get to step through the minute steps of rendering a single frame and see whats going on in the guts of DirectX. Man, it’s like PIX just oozes geekiness…
The next best thing about this talk was that he told us that he wrote a book……45 times….
It seems like every time I turn around Google has come out with some new cool feature. Tonight my wife was going to a friend’s house (George, one of the other 4 guys) and got lost. Not a big surprise. Anyhow, I whip out the google maps to figure out where she is, and notice a “hybrid” button in addition to the original “Map” and “Satellite” buttons. This has to be one of the coolest things i have ever seen….
This is a hybrid map of the vague area in which George lives. I picked this location because thats where I happened to stop before I got her to the right place….. Sorry George, hope noone starts stalking you…..
You may want to toggle between the Satellite and Hybrid buttons to see the coolness…
Our department manager showed us Scott Hanselman’s video of 10 utilities in 10 minutes. Probably one of the most informative and useful things I’ve seen lately.
Scott’s site has the list of these utilities and links to the pages to obtain them (some are free, some are for a fee). A variety of these utilities have made quite a few of my daily (if not hourly) tasks that much easier and enjoyable.
Enjoy.
*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0J0: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]: sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got crap to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: Eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0J0: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
Hitler[AoE]: wtf
Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha
benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full
Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
Roosevelt: yah thats right biznitch im comin for ya
Stalin: church help me
Churchill: like u helped me before? sure ill just sit here
Stalin: dont be an arss
Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
Eisenhower: LOL
benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
Hitler[AoE]: o man ur focked
paTTon: oh what now biotch
Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
*benny-tow has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: lame
Roosevelt: gj paTTon
paTTon: thnx
Hitler[AoE]: WTF Eisenhower hax hes killing all my sh1t
Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
Eisenhower: Nuts!
benny-tow: wtf that mean?
Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun cocksocker
Stalin: rofl
T0J0: HAHAHHAA
Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
*Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
Stalin: OMG LMAO!
Hitler[AoE]: WTF i didnt click there omg this game blows
*Hitler[AoE] has left the game*
paTTon: hahahhah
T0J0: WTF my teammates are n00bs
benny-tow: shut up noob
Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
Eisenhower: yah me too
T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right u dont got no ships lololol
Eisenhower: fock u
paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
Stalin: go to hell lol
paTTon: fock this sh1t im goin afk
Eisenhower: yah this is gay
*Roosevelt has left the game.*
Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
Eisenhower: sh1t now we need some1 to join
*tru_m4n has joined the game.*
tru_m4n: hi all
T0J0: hey
Stalin: sup
Churchill: hi
tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES
Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
T0J0: wtf is nukes?
T0J0: holy sh*tholysh*thoylshti!!!111
*T0J0 has been eliminated.*
*The Allied team has won the game!*
Eisenhower: awesome!
Churchill: gg noobs no re
T0J0: thats bullsh*t u fockin suck
*T0J0 has left the game.*
*Eisenhower has left the game.*
Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team, u guys didnt help me for ****
Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help neway dumbarss
tru_m4n: l8r all
benny-tow: bye
Churchill: l8r
Stalin: fock u all
tru_m4n: shut up commie lol
*tru_m4n has left the game.*
benny-tow: lololol u commie
Churchill: ROFL
Churchill: bye commie
*Churchill has left the game.*
*benny-tow has left the game.*
Stalin: i hate u all fags
*Stalin has left the game.*
paTTon: lol no1 is left
paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
*paTTon has been eliminated.*
paTTon: o sh1t!
*paTTon has left the game.*
Today is the one year anniversary of 4GuysFromViewpoint.
We are one fewer guys.
Happy one year anniversary.
Happy one more lame post.
Dear Development Diary,
Today I rolled into work tired…again. (Fourth of July weekend really did a number on me) I stared blankly at my code and vainly tried to remember what I was working on the day before. Even my notes I left for myself are doing little to jog my memory of just where I left off and what I needed to do next. (Note to self: Research ways other developers get started each day and what tricks they use to allow them to quickly jump back into the middle of whatever it was they were working on the night or weekend before. Anyone got any great suggestions?)
I’m working on developing a web portal and it’s amazing the small complications you run into when creating web projects. For example, I need to have 3 columns of checkboxes bound to a dataset within a datagrid. You would think this would be a simple thing, maybe setting the column style to “checkbox” or something similar, but unfortunately it became a MUCH more complicated issue involving a template class and column class.
The datagrid is created in the code behind so these checkbox columns need to be added dynamically and changes in the checkboxes need to update the dataset (obviously since I said that I needed them bound). I think I’m pretty close to getting that all worked out. The checkboxes are in the datagrid and are displaying the data from the dataset just fine, now I just need to hook up the checkbox events that will update the dataset appropriately.
Now I had an ID column in the dataset, but what I really want displayed is the name associated with that ID…nothing is ever easy is it? I need to leave the ID in the dataset because I use that dataset to update the database, maybe I’ll just add a name column manually….. *sigh*.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll get it all figured out and when I do it will be some simple little trick to use when I was doing it the hard brute force method of which I seem to be so fond of….ah, the trials and tribulations of the life of a developer!
Sometimes I wonder what the heck I would have done if computers hadn’t been invented. I’m not sure I’m really suited for any other kind of work…..
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