Under the Code

I am up a little later than normal reworking my model generation code in the new version of my Codereck PHP framework. While all the back-end work flow is still the same, I have reworked the way I use XML in order to make the XML a lot smaller and easier to read.  I will post some code up later (once I figure out how to get a code highlighter with Wordpress working) but instead of using a bunch of tags, I have been able to compress the code by using attributes and in all honesty, I should have been using attributes from the beginning.  Changing this has reduced the number of lines in the XML file generated from an example database (with only 11 tables) from 750 lines to 135 lines (also note that I only needed to write about 15 lines manually and the rest was auto generated by the framework) which is 5X+ smaller in line count (file size is probably closer 2X smaller).  I imagine that the line count will range from 6X to 9X smaller with more tables.  While the file size reduction is not as dramatic as the line count reduction, the XML in none the less a lot easier to read.

I am sure everyone has let frustration get the best of them at one point or another and recently that has happened to me. Without getting into too many details about my frustration, it basically boiled down to trying to do something for years without a lot to show for it (except some experience).  That is not to say the experience earned is not valuable, because it is, but I was not thinking that way at the time of writing the email. (continue reading…)

Well the guys over at UT decided to follow the path of Google and have their own version of Google’s Summer of Code called Unity’s Summer of Code.  I think this is a fantasic ideas and the reward for being accepted and building the project that meets UT level of quality it also pretty good (5500 worth of money and software for 6 weeks worth of coding it pretty descent) not to mention you get to work under the mentorship of a core Unity developer. (continue reading…)

Well its been a little more than a week and I have created a series of 5 videos to help beginners get into the Unity’s user interface a little bit easier and quicker, or at least that is the idea. It is also a test run to see if I am any good at creating video tutorials. For me, I think that video tutorials are the best way to learn and while there are a lot of people how do them, very few of them are good. One group of people that makes the best video training in my opinion are the guys at 3dbuzz. So I am interested in your thought about how these video tutorials are. Do you like them? Anything you didn’t like? Would you pay for video training like this that was more in-depth? Any comments and suggestion are welcomed. (continue reading…)

So much for every week, I’ll shoot for at least once a month which is a little more realistic.

I have been working with the assets server for a little while and it seems to work ok, however I still don’t see how they can charge $500 for it.  My biggest issues so far is that it does seem to be a little unstable.  At least 3 times (in the past month) I was able to connect to the server but when I tried to update, I would get a timeout error.  I try again a little later and magically it would work after doing nothing to the server.  Other than that issue, the assets server does what it needs even tho it does not have all the features of SVN (while have a much higher price tag). (continue reading…)

I have been playing around with Unity ever since they released version 2.5 which included development on the Windows operating system; it’s been about 2 months now.  I am done with the evaluating period and decided that a general review of Unity would be a good way to start of this blog series.  I am starting to get into a specific project that I will be using Unity for and hope to continue this blog series (at least 1 post a week) and basically post back on how Unity is the deeper I get into it.

This general review only covers the things I have been working with and because I am more on the programming side, some things I did not cover like asset importing which deals a lot with 2D/3D graphics.  Lets get to it: (continue reading…)

Ok, why do sports keep track and talk about the most random obscure stats.  I was watching ESPN and they were talking about a baseball game that happened the other day.  Then after they reviewed that game they said this was the first time between these two teams where the game was tied up by a home run in 9th inning and then won by a walk off home run (if that is the correct term for the first batter in the inning to home run) in the 11th inning.  I mean come on, who really cares about that? (continue reading…)

Ever since Unity 2.5 was release, it seems like there has been a lot of users that are annoyed with the splash screens and watermarks (well most people are ok with the splash screen but a lot of people really hate the watermark) that Unity uses if the user is running the indie license.  These splash screens and watermarks have the option to be disabled if you own the professional license however people think that it is not fair and think of it as punishment for people using indie.  There are two reasons that people say why Unity has the splash screen/watermark and here is my view on both, whether or not either one plays into the reason that Unity has the splash screen/watermarks. (continue reading…)

If you are looking for a game engine to build the next million dollar game, depending on the engines you are looking at and comparing, a question on whether source code access is available or not may come up. I have noticed some people have a suborn point of view that if the engine does not provide source code access, any other engine that does is instantaneously better than it. This is a bad mind set to have when looking at a game engine depending on what you needs and goals are. (continue reading…)

Now I have always been interested in game programming ever since I played Starcraft and Diablo 2, which are still 2 of my favorite games (man Blizzard makes some of the best games that can last forever).  The first language I ever learned was VB, version 6.0 I think.  It was an ok language but not really designed for the creation of games (at least not the level of Starcraft /Diablo 2).  I moved on and started to play around with C++ since it was and still currently is the industry standard for game programming.  Now I have done a few things with C++, the biggest being a 3D particle system along the side of 3DBuzz’s C++ video series. (continue reading…)