Oooh.

My best virtual croatian friend Joe Basic and I have opened a Google Code page.

http://code.google.com/p/rainweaver/

The Rainweaver Framework (it's a codename, whatever) is a set of libraries for game developers. You can read about our evil plans on the first page. There's something you can download, as well. Let us know what you think, of course!

If you know C# and you're the reliable type, consider joining us. We're busy with work, university, and all the rest, so it's a long term project.

Thanks for reading.

Work, work, work

I know you've been missing me. I've been missing you too - blog of mine.

Anyway, it's been a super busy period with super big things to get done. For instance, I wrote a Dynamics NAV text fob parser in order to create a versioning documentation against two databases. It's been both a pain and a pleasure. I had a few "eureka!" moments worth all the stress I went through in order to deliver the tool in a timely manner. I also managed to understand parsing / compiler theory a bit more. You never stop learning.

I also took the opportunity to brush up my design patterns knowledge. I've been messing with MVC and today I've been reading up about MVP - the former being model-view-controller and the latter model-view-presenter. Curious? I'll post a pretty scheme I made tomorrow. It's pretty, I swear. Edit: and here it is:


I learned some new tricks in these months, and I got to the point where you have to actually sit down and try to make everything snap in place.

• MVP? World editor. Absolutely.
• Object persistence? Game server. Finally I realized the true form of the Entity System (more on this later).
• System.Threading? Do more with less. Locality of data - as few shared states as possible, lockless when you can, otherwise don't bother.
  
• System.AddIn? Useless, use the MEF and do yourself a favour; however, you learned that proxies and abstractions are a good thing to decouple the contract from the implementation - and if you're smart (like the System.AddIn guys) you have a version tolerant framework without even breaking a sweat. And here comes a platform-independent engine API...!

Thanks for reading.

System.AddIn

I wish I had more time to write more often, but I've been quite busy lately. I have however something to share, and it's not much since it's publicly available, but it's still something worth having a look for those who, like me, didn't know about it until yesterday.

I'm talking about the System.AddIn namespace (the 3.5 version, it's an assembly you must reference).

While researching for plug-in frameworks, I've found that our beloved framework allows you to create extensible applications with very little effort. You don't have to code your own assembly attributes, your own interfaces, your own versioning gimmicks, and more importantly your own external assembly loading routines (which are most likely to revolve around the black magic-y world of AppDomains). This doesn't mean, however, that you don't have to design the way these addins interface with your host application - that's another story.

Two CLR Inside Out columns (this, and this one) introduce the System.AddIn pipeline. I wish I'd found this stuff sooner.

Two things I do not like: The first is the way the pipeline is layed out in terms of directory hierarchy; it's surely clean enough, but I don't like it when someone else decides where I should put my assemblies (.NET has a local assembly copy paradigm if you aren't going the GAC route), so, in this regard, it could be improved and allow for a little bit of customization. The second, you need to create different projects for the pipeline segments and I for one already have to deal with enough projects already. However, the shining beauty of this umpteenth incredibly useful feature of .NET quickly dissipates any shadow of doubt. Man, I can't believe I just wrote that.

Of Shame

I'd like to crystallize in a blog post the wisdom of an australian "developer" named "openglaussie", as seen over at Gamedev.net.

I guess nothing good will come from spaghetti eaters, mafia bosses and short , tan people, who bullshit others as a way of living, italians are the worst catergory in everything.

[...]

I don't think i have a wrong attitude, is just my way to put things on, i don't sugar coat, no way, italians aren't good at making games, i am not talking about knowledge, since we all know that italians universities are among the best ( only in litterature ), [...] technologically italy is many steps behind, no entertainment culture finalized at videogames [...], they don't use their cars anymore to spare oil

Please note how he also edited his posts later on. I'm not sure I feel like commenting on this right now.

Edit: well, while I'm waiting for the report I'm working on to finish crunching numbers, I guess I can spend a few minutes writing down how I feel about this.
That people of other countries have a low consideration for italians is nothing new. It's a sad reality, not shared across everyone of course, but it does happen. However, we're talking about game development here and I'll keep it at that.
I think Italy never ever had the possibility to grow in the gaming industry. We simply don't have a business for that. Many bright minds fly away from this country towards more fertile fields, where they can actually work and make a good living out of their talent. The idea of a game dev convention is both a good and an irrelevant news. A good news, seeing as there's always the need to spark a start, but irrelevant, since I really doubt it'll help investors create business. It's all about earning a living eventually (for big companies even more so). We had a few good productions in a distant past (Milestone with Screamer and a few other racing games, or Lightshock with Pray for Death which was a very nice fighting game at the time), but then it all stopped.

I really think it's hard to start competing with multi-millionaire companies ex nihilo. I also think we wouldn't be able to create a Cave Story clone (which is an amazing game, a one man effort worth gold) even if we really wanted. Why is it so? I don't know, all I know is that they can convention all they want, but that's not gonna help unless someone starts changing the business. And this is something not happening overnight.

I for one have always been interested and secretly in love with game programming. I never found anyone to share this passion of mine with where I live. The italian game dev site reminds me of the desert, with a few, lone explorers along its path.

But then again, I can't complain. I for one am not doing much to change this. I cannot.

Designing a Magic System

I just found out this amazing series thanks to gamedev.net dailies.

Designing a Magic System by Andrew Doull

(Plus a fine article from Craig Perko - found in the series above)

Seeing how magic and its systems have gotten a formal definition over time is both entertaining and enlightening. I used to design a pen and paper RPG rules for fun when I was in my teens. The act of balancing, adding to or removing from a specific rule set is not as straightforward as it might seem. Actually, while I'm all for coming up with cool ideas about magic and so on, I must admit players (including me) are used to defined schemes. So, I guess, we're not just balancing fireballs versus shields, but also marketability versus innovation.

And makes me wonder if we will eventually get used to "common" magic...

A change of... hosting

About to move to my newly bought domain... redirect your bookmarks (as if you bookmarked this site, ha!) ;P

Edit: as I mentioned in the comments, the new site is not ready and I'm not sure how long it'll take... :]

Edit 2: I guess I shouldn't have mentioned this "change" seeing as I'm finding blogspot so much more comfortable. It has everything I need at the moment. I'll post again should I ever actually change the hosting of my blog. Hurrah for pointless posts! :D

A wicker soldier

Orel keeps on amazing us with new modifications. I can't wait to see this guy hacking and slashing. I wish I could model and texture like this...!