Finally the long awaited Personal.SethEden.com Sub-domain is online!

Basically at this point the page is only a template for other topics of interest on the same sub-domain. I haven’t done any work yet on any of these menu links yet so all the links except the one back here to the blog are dead. I will be working my way down the list adding them as I get them done. Enjoy and feel free to let me know what you think of the site!

If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve posted all the new site graphics that I made while I was in Thailand. This comes with a special thanks to my girl friend for taking the time to upload all the files from her laptop since they didn’t burn properly on the DVD I made just before my departure. I couldn’t have done it without you Mahal!

Hope you like it, I do.

Cheers

Seth

Well as with all projects, they can get in the way of real life. I’ve been busy working at Circuit City lately installing home networks and laptop computers, which has a real job satisfaction making people happy with their computing life. The down side is I haven’t had much time to work on the game engine, so the Todo list has only gotten bigger with little solutions. I know the other developer on the project was considering to re-deploy the Project Management and bug tracking system on his Linux server because of some SQL conflicts and integration issues.

So here is the new Todo list:

Create a LUA file containing a table of console commands

Code to check if the user has typed in a proper command in the console

Configuration Options for the console, fonts and colors, bold, italic and underline options.

Design an image for a splash screen (game startup, place holder for real graphic)

Tabbed Consoles?

Console management across multiple monitors

Project Management and bug tracking

Extensible Console Class so we can attach it to any window object with a hWnd.

Console Scrolling up

Graphics Options Dialog Box Design

Console Background graphic Design

Debug Graphics (Run Time): System Time & Date, Game play time, Frame Rate, (Eventually Collision Quad Trees, Debug Vectors)

Bind Keys from Configuration File

Bind Keys from Console

Save key binding configuration

Save Monitor-Graphics Bindings

Load-Save Alternative configuration files & Bindings for keys/graphics/monitors

List of commands:

Context Help: > Command -Help

List Commands

List Bindings

Rem Binding

Bind Key

Set Resolution -Monitor

Set WindMode -Monitor -Mode

Bind Monitor -MonitorNum

Bind MonMode

Well a couple nights ago my friend Charles and myself finally got our game project to integrate with CVS so we can share our stuff, but this brings a whole new layer of problems to the front, because we are collaborating we need to have a way to co-manage the project which means some project management software that we can both use. Something for doing version control and bug / feature tracking and a place where we can keep a list of feature requests or a to-do list. So I’m going to look into that today, I found this website today that looks promising:

http://matrix.squiz.net/

Well the game engine has been coming along nicely. I’ve been working with a guy named Charles and we’ve developed some really cool core engine components so far. Up to this point it’s been nothing but the core windows components and basic support for the DirectX SDK API.

I wanted to have full support for dynamically switching between full screen and windowed mode while in the game. So we got that feature running, also there was some other related features to being in full screen and clicking on some other window in the event that the user has multiple monitors but the game is only active on one monitor. Similarly the game engine must also handle an ALT+TAB out to another application or window, and from windowed mode the game should pause rendering when the game is minimized or placed in the background.

We got it to pause the game rendering but the game itself is still executing and eating up the CPU. When the game engine is not active of course it should not be eating CPU power because the user might have to do something important like writing a blog post, or responding to some important e-mail or making a quick edit on some web page. Since most video games require the full attention of the computer hardware games are developed with a very high priority setting for executing on the CPU. Just because the rendering is paused doesn’t mean the priority level has changed so we still need to implement a system that will drop the priority level thus not requiring large amounts of CPU time to do nothing when the user wants to work on something else for a bit, or step out for a quick lunch between levels or whatever.

Last night I finally broke down and downloaded the new version of Visual Studio 2008 Express and directX9c SDK. I found a really cool tutorial online for learning how to program video games. Granted I already know how to program windows GUI applications in C++, the last of my few contracts have been in VB or VBA, so my actual ability in C++ is a little rusty and I’ve been planning to get back to it for some time. Specifically I really wanted to finally put some focus on getting good at it.

Here was the tutorial site that I found:

http://www.directxtutorial.com/

So just this morning I followed the first tutorial for DX9 and got the little windows application to display a blue screen, then fade it to black, and fade back to blue in a repeating cycle. It’s still a little jerky so once I get it nice and smooth I’ll see if I can post some source code and a downloadable exe in my software section. I haven’t had this much fun in a LONG time!

Once I get this thing working a little better in the direction I want to go, I’ll probably post a web forum so members can come and hang out and have more interactive discussions.

I was going to comment on this article:

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/The_Appeal_Of_Mars_999.html

But I’ve been to busy at work and at home to really put together anything as of yet, since I wanted to post pictures along with my argument. I’ll have to get to it later.

I did, however, want to note these two articles also recently posted on the MNSFS mailing list:

http://www.rocketryplanet.com/content/view/192/38/

And:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm

For those of you who don’t know the NSS is building a grass roots response to the LoST legislative action. NSS of course being the National Space Society. LoST of course being the new Law of the Sea Treaty that puts Private Property on celestial bodies in Serious Jeopardy.

You can read more for your self here:

http://www.nss.org/legislative/

This was recently posted on the MNSFS - Minnesota Space Frontier Society mailing list and I had a response that was interesting so I thought I would post it here, hopefully to drum up some conversation.