A Codepoets Corner

Fahrenheit - Turning up the Heat

2005-10-14T12:09:00.000+11:00

Fahrenheit – Turning up the Heat

Well, last night I finished a run through of Fahrenheit (released in the US as Project Indigo) and I have to say – I’m impressed.

I don’t mean that in a small way either, I’ve seen too many games (even worked on a few) to be impressed easily. It’s not sparkly graphics that impress me – the graphics are nice but no Half-Life 2 or Far Cry – and its not multiplayer fragfests that impress me – Fahrenheit has no multiplayer.
No, what impresses me is that the company have done exactly what they set out to do, and what they set out to do was redefine the almost-dead adventure game genre, whilst creating what may be the first real “Interactive Movie” experience.

The entire game revolves around this idea of an interactive movie. The tutorial is even presented to you by the Director who talks about the game as if it were taking place in a movie studio. Once the game starts, we’re treated to cinematic camera shots, multiple controllable characters and, most importantly, a truly cinematic plot.

The main ‘hero’ of our story is Lucas Kane, and ordinary man in the wrong place at the wrong time. The story begins as he comes out of a trance, having just stabbed a man to death in a restaurant rest-room. We’re plunged straight into the action as we have to figure out how to get away without being caught by the police – one of which, unfortunately for Lucas, is sitting at the counter inside the restaurant enjoying a coffee.

The story and game itself is fairly linear but at each point there are many choices that can affect the way the story unravels. The whole game can be finished somewhere around 7-8 hrs however even knowing the plot, I’m still tempted to go back and play again making different choices. What, for instance would have happened had the character just tried to run at that point, instead of trying to clean up some of the evidence? What if the police that come to investigate after Lucas gets way (who you get to control as well) were apathetic about investigating and did a slip-shod job?

I could go on, but I don’t want to ruin the story.

The game takes its cinematic roots very seriously, borrowing liberally from popular movies and stories of the last few decades. There are scenes that could have been taken straight from the matrix later in the game and one scene that is very reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. Rather then detract with their sameness however these scenes are quite well done, and show an attention to action and detail that most current games – particularly the reasonably poor adventure games released in recent years – lack.

The control system also deserves a mention as it provides a lot of the feel that draws you into the game. Your character is controlled with the cursor keys, in a resident evil style control pattern that has you pressing up to walk forward and left or right to turn, whilst down makes you do a quick one-eighty turn to face behind you.

To interact with objects in the world however, you use the mouse and a mouse gesture system similar to the one used by Black & White, though simpler and more forgiving which is a bonus. To walk through a door for instance, you hold down the left mouse button and push the mouse away from you (if the door opens outward) or towards you (if it opens inwards). The required gestures for actions you can perform are always displayed at the top of the screen next to icons that display the action. Obviously these are context sensitive – if you’re near a door, it will show you what gesture to perform to open it, and perhaps what gesture to perform to look through the peephole and see who is behind it. If you’re near a fridge it will show you what gesture opens it. Once its open, there is a gesture to close it, and perhaps a gesture to grab a carton of milk and take a swig.

It takes a little getting used to, but after about ten minutes it feels so natural you’ll wonder why anyone ever used point and click.

Then there are the action sequences, which are liberally sprinkled throughout the game. Normally I’m reluctant to play “Action Adventures” as they tend to be twitch fests with a few adventure trappings however the scenes in Fahrenheit add to the tension and plot rather than detract from it.

There are three types of controls used in the action sequence, the first is pressing left and right alternatively as fast as you can – a control method that harkens back to the days of the Commodore 64 and other early computers. This method is used when you need to do something that requires strength, such as lifting something heavy or resisting something strong.
The second is again pressing left and right, but this time more carefully, trying to keep a bar from getting to close to either edge. This is used in times of stress, for keeping calm or balancing.
The third control method is used in all the most impressive action sequences, often in conjunction with the first method. It’s a Parappa the rapper style sequence hitting game, where you’ve got to use both the cursor keys and the numberpad and press the right direction at the right moment. The directions often seem to mirror what’s going on on-screen and are quite a clever way for giving the user control of the success of failure of very complicatated action sequences. You’ll make the main character jump, dive, kick, struggle and… well no, that would be spoiling the story.

One final point, this game is trying, and succeeding to be an interactive movie. It has everything you would expect from a modern, adult-oriented action film (including clichés – angry police chief anyone?). There are killings, gun-play, mysteries, chases, escapes, evil villans, good-hearted love-interests, plenty of time with each main character exploring their inner (and outer) motivations, and sex.

Oh yes, did I mention the sex? Fahrenheit has really turned up the heat with full love scenes (and no, they aren’t just writhing on each others laps with their underpants still on a-la Playboy Mansion) and one of the scenes even includes a mini-game. This bears talking about with all the controversy surrounding GTA:SA and the Hot Coffee mod, because from what I’ve seen, Hot Coffee has nothing on the scenes in Fahrenheit.

That’s not to say they’re excessive, and they certainly don’t contain anything you would see on an M15+ movie here in Australia. A shock for some gamers perhaps, we’re not used to getting to see CG nipples on screen – normally even when the breasts are bared and bouncing (Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines for instance), theres still something covering the nipple. In that way, games seem to be about four decades behind movie, for some reason it is seen as worse to show something in a game, that’s made of digital characters (IE, Computer Generated. Not Real) that can be seen at 9:30pm on free-to-air TV any night of the week.

It also remains to be pointed out that unlike Hot Coffee, the love scenes in Fahrenheit are there for a purpose. They explore the characters, create links and help form an emotional bond in the mind of the player so that when events occur later in the game we actually care. This is one of the main artistic reasons movies also include such scenes (also, it sells. But I’m talking about –good- movies).

Overall, I can’t recommend this game enough. Theres enough replayability that the shortness of the playing time isn’t that much of a problem – as it will be interesting to see how different scenes can play out with different choices and the game gives you the option to replay any scene you’ve already played in a particular account to see how it could have been different, and there are extras to unlock as well – movies, an art gallery, and many of the action sequences are available to be played on their own, or watched without being played so you can enjoy the scene without paying attention to the twitch-action.

If you like action movies, if you like adventure games, if you like good stories – if you just want to try something a bit more involved than the average “modern” game, then you must buy this game.

A Gamers' Manifesto

2005-05-31T15:03:00.000+10:00

A Gamers' Manifesto

Interesting look at the top twenty "Gamers wants". Personally, I think this is more a what gamers -should- be wanting, rather than what gamers actually want. Year after year the top 10 movies, games and pop songs show that really, the average people are happy buying and eating up the commercial pap that has replaced innovation.

Although, i'm happy to say that there are still some decent games out there. I recently bought an XBox over ebay so I might say a bit more when it arrives, however I did borrow a friends over the weekend just gone and i've got to say there are some particularly interesting ideas floating around. Sure they've all got large quantities of violence - that is what sells afterall - but theres still obviously some thought (if only a little) going into them.

Jade Empire and Fable both look great, Jade empire for the feel of the game and the depth of conversation possible that can really flesh out the world, and Fable for the 'extras' that make it really special, rather than just another beat-em-up rpg. Being able to change your hair style at a hairdressers, get tattoos and choose clothes specifically to make you "attractive" or "scary" rather than just their armour potential may be mainly cosmetic, but they really draw the player in and get them to identify with their character. Also, taking into account the amount a character eats (fat or thin), the heaviness of their weapons (building muscle) and how much sunlight they get (tan or pale) goes a long way to making you feel part of a larger world.

Cory Doctorow, Creative Commons and Commodization.

2005-04-06T17:46:00.000+10:00

It's funny how things come full circle. I saw a review of Ex Machina on Boing Boing, skimmed the preview (i'm currently getting hold of a copy to have a proper read, so review soon!), read about the history of Cyberpunk and was lead straight back to boing boing to look up Cory, one of the owners of the blog.

Cory has licensed his books under the creative commons licence, which could possibly be called "Open Source" for publishing. It gives anyone the right to download, read, print, eat, make paper planes out of and distribute to friends the books covered under that licence.

Needless to say, i've grabbed both of Cory's books and plan to read them shortly.

But this has gotten me thinking again about the viability of open source as a business model. Publishers have found, for the most part, that books released under the creative commons licence still manage to sell as well as their un-free counterparts - maybe better, but who's to say how they would have sold otherwise. This is a -good thing-. However, I doubt its going to be enough to convince other publishers and/or authors to go the same route - and why should they? They deserve to get paid for what the write, don't they?

At the moment, the system works. Portable computers suitable for ebook readers are still rare and reasonably expensive (though I picked up a hp pocket-pc off ebay for $200 off ebay and havn't looked back), and a lot of people simply wont want to make the change from paper-based books. This is fine, it means the publisher will continue to make money and hence, so will the author.

When we get to the realm of software however, things are a little different. Whether you download software from the net, or buy it in a store, you use it the same way - on the computer. Therefore when software pirates release cracked games or applications, or when they are opensourced, there is no motivating factor for the user to buy the software as well. Some still do, there are still collectors who like the boxes and printed manuals, and the pretty look of the official cds. There are even those who feel they should buy it on principle because they enjoyed it. Thats great, but not everyone does.

Copyprotection issues aside (thats a rant for another day), the question then becomes - how do we make money when we're giving away our product for free. That is what open-source is doing. At first, the concept of open source confused me. I liked it, I love the fact that I get source with my software and can tweak it and the fact that tweaks get released means that software can be improved, developed and bugfixed with a speed unheard of by traditional development models.

The point still remains, its mostly given away for free so the authors get no payment for the hundreds of hours spent working on the product. Except maybe "tipjar" payments, as Cory calls them.

Even this, I was fine with. I enjoy programming in my spare time and wouldn't mind contributing to an open source product. I figured it was a hobby type thing. The serious players, like the linux distributions (Mandrake, Red-hat etc) charge money for services. Installation and running support, the likes of which you get with MS corporate licences. So thats that I thought.

Then I heard that IBM and others (Sun?) were employing groups of people to work on open source software and this I just couldn't understand. I never went to business school, I've done some study and earned my cert IV in Small business management, but that never mention Commodization.

Thats the way they make money, Commidization. You see, the idea is that you reduce the cost of a product (to nil if possible) in order to push sales of related products. In this case, as an example, if software is free then it encourages sales of software related products, such as hardware and software support. It's not accident then that the major corporate propronents of open source software are hardware companies, and its primary opponents are the big software firms (Such as microsoft).

What does this mean then for the publishing industry? Well, there are two ways I can see for the publishing industry to move forward. The first, is to join the creative commons experiment and give it a go. Its not going away and doesn't seem to hurt sales. Forget about DRM, it's never going to work - technology opens new doors and makes things possible that weren't possible before, people will not accept hobbling of their capabilities to protect copyright. If its digital, it's spreading, and if its not digital - it will be soon.

The second idea takes Commodization into account and moves with it instead of trying to hold on to old, outdated business models. Buy/Merge/Start up an electronics division and design an ebook solution package. There is still no affordable, good solution for those who really want to make the jump from paper to electrons but still want to be able to read where they used to (bed, beach, living room etc).

Build a paperback size reader for fiction books, and an a4 size one for graphical intensive books such as RPG's and Comics. Market them at a decent price and start releasing ebooks, without drm or some method to lock them into your product, for next to nothing. Fictionwise does a good trade selling ebooks, and occasionally giving them away - that same principle would commoditize your books and boost your hardware sales.
And of course, you still keep your paper based publishing - not everyone wants to move to the digital formats.

This is the way digital publishing could go, I feel. Its the way I hope it goes - DRM is a dead end that is sucking up too much time and resources, and surely even those developing the solutions know by now that they simply do not work.

The Tao of Gaming - Blood Bowl re-review

2005-04-06T11:41:00.000+10:00

The Tao of Gaming - Blood Bowl re-review

Now this is a -nice- blog. I can't help it, as much as I might try sometimes to grow up and be a responsible adult, I just love games. Board games, card games, computer games, roleplaying games, we have a games closet bigger than both my parents and my fiancee's parents combined and that doesn't count the rpg ebooks and hardcover books that are on the shelves.

In anycase, I thought I had to link to review. Blood bowl is a great game with a vibrant player-base even now that seems to get forgotten sometimes because it's neither 'new' nor as big and mainstream as the two gargantuans of the Games Workshop line, Warhammer and Warhammer Fantasy.

In anycase, i've been anxious to paint some models now for a while - I havn't done that in something like eight years. The question is - do I start working on a warhammer army, cool but a large commitment, or do I get a blood bowl team - a much smaller commitment, but requires me to order from america/europe.

I guess it depends on whether I can find a cheap version of the blood bowl box set somewhere ;)

Ex Machina

2005-04-05T13:07:00.000+10:00

Boing Boing: Ex Machina: cyberpunk tabletop RPG

A short review of Ex Machina at the Boing Boing directory has me well and truly drooling on the keyboard. I've always been a big fan of the Cyberpunk genre and it's moves into cyberpunk. My personal favorite has always been Cyberpunk 2020 (true gibson style corporate cyberpunk role playing), followed closely by Shadowrun (An interesting blend of fantasy, magic and cyberpunk. It's difficult to imagine how exactly this works, but it does, and is one of the most popular cp rpg's out there.) but i'll definately have to give this one a look!

Poetry Month

2005-04-05T11:42:00.000+10:00

Apparently this month is national poetry month, probably in America as most of the bloggers i've seen mention it are American. Still, i'm always happy to jump on the bandwagon of a good idea, so i'll be presenting some poetry each weekend to you for the month of April. Saturdays I will post snippets of poetry from some of my favorite poets, and Sundays will be original poetry of my own that hasn't seen the light of day in quite some time.

I've already missed the first weekend so look for the first posts later this week.

The New DLL Hell

2005-03-31T08:38:00.000+10:00

The case of the InvalidCastException struck again with a particularly difficult to locate error yesterday when I spent some time working on my current personal project. Apparently this is an error a lot of people run into in one form or another when implementing plugins though unfortunately it would seem that the version I encountered was not the standard (as always).

If you've never heard about this problem before, theres more info on the most commonly found versions of the error at http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/plugin.html

Apparently the dot net framework is able to differentiate between two loaded assemblies, even if they are identical. IE, if the same assembly is in two different places and happens to be loaded twice, the runtime will treat them as completely different entities. This doesn't seem like a problem until you get to a problem like the one I encountered.

The plugin framework I designed was scanning a directory (in this case /plugins off the main folder where all the binaries were being compiled to) so to keep things easy, I set the plugin target of the compile to be this /plugins directory. After all, if you're compiling to the right directory to begin with, you don't have to copy things around right?

Unfortunately, one of the dll's referenced by the plugin was an interface dll (as explained in the other article, I was already doing it the way he suggests). As the compile targeted the plugin directory instead of the common bin directory, the compiler saw fit to copy the dependancy with the plugin. So now I have two copies of the interface dll, one in the main directory and one in the plugin directory.

Now when running the program, I get the invalidcastexception. From what I can deduce, both copies of the interface dll must be loaded by the program along with the plugin dll. So even though the plugin implements the plugin interface, the runtime assumes it implements the interface defined in the assembly in the plugin directory, whilst it assumes the interface I was to cast it to is the interface defined in the main directory interface assembly. Both of these interfaces are identical, as the assemblies are identical, however the fact that they are located in two different places is enough for .Net to decide that the plugin cannot be cast to the interface I needed it in, and instead must crash.

I don't think this is so much a bug in the .Net framework as it is a 'feature' or sideeffect of the .Net security and managed code abilities. Still, it was a painful unexplained error that took hours to solve.

The solution? Compile the plugin to the main binary directories with all the other assemblies and the executeable. When its time to test the plugin, copy it to the plugins directory on its lonesome.

Works now.

Slashdot | The Fate of The Free Newspaper

2005-03-15T09:28:00.000+11:00

Slashdot | The Fate of The Free Newspaper

This is an interesting article although I found the conversation following to be even more interesting. I think the problem with the internet as a new medium is a problem for the media organisations (such as RIAA, MPAA and the News Companies). People seem to forget that the free press started as exactly that, someone with a printing press starts making a newspaper to report to the people of his community and bring them together as a community.

We're in an era now where anyone in the world can be a reporter, with blogs and webpages easily obtained. Perhaps the media is dying and just doesn't know it yet.

The media has to charge money in order to pay its large quantities of reporters, publishers, editors and business officers - as well as make a profit for its shareholders. Perhaps they need to be looking at a new way to make their money if they wish to survive, or at least learn to trim the fat?

Implementing a Script Engine into .Net

2005-03-08T14:04:00.000+11:00

Hey everyone,

I've just finished writing a .net scripting engine, very basic one, that compiles .net language files (my current implementation takes only c# files but could easily be extended to vb and other languages) and runs them on the fly.

It's an interesting process, if anyone's interested let me know and i'll post a tut.

-Nick

......

2005-02-03T13:08:00.000+11:00

Ok, so its been a while since my last post - I've had illness, whiteboard days and my girlfriend to keep happy so I just been running out of time.

"They say the immigrants steal the hubcups of respected gentlemen,
They say it would be wine and roses... if england were for englishmen again.

I saw a dirty overcoat at the foot of the pillar of the road,
propped inside was an old man who time could not erode.
The night was slapped by silence though as blue lights circled past,
The dancer called for an ambulance and the bars were closed up fast..."

Haiku Error Messages

2005-01-19T12:14:00.000+11:00

Haiku Error Message Competition

I remember seeing this a long time ago, Haiku Error Messages. I ran across them again and thought I might post the link.

I really love these, one day I'd like to implement them in a program. Not very functional perhaps, but funny.

My personal favorite:-

Chaos reigns within
Reflect, repent, and reboot
Order shall return
-Suzie Wagner

Blood Bowl

2005-01-18T09:46:00.000+11:00

Back when I was in high school, I got involved with a couple of guys who were into the Games Workshop games in a big way. It was a strange thing to be into down here in Tassie, where tabletop wargames weren't all that big - no where near as popular as they are today.

Warhammer 40,000 was what it was all about back then, and we had a ball. I still consider getting back into it from time to time, though I don't know many people who still play.

In anycase, around the time we were collecting Warhammer, a smaller game was released by Games Workshop entitled Blood Bowl. I'm not sure if it was teh first release, or a re-release but it looked pretty good and has us drooling over the magazine pictures for weeks.

Interesting then it took me ten years to eventually get a chance to play it. These days its considered a "Specialist" game, along with Necromunda (which I did play), Mordheim and several other of their games that never made it as big as the two Warhammers. Now, the rules for Blood Bowl (and the other spec games) are available for free download on the specialist games website (Get Blood Bowl here), making these great games available for everyone.

I ran a league with some friends a few months back, as there is a software client that allows internet play. Now you don't need to spend any money at all to give Blood bowl a go - though I promise you, it's not going to feel the same as it does when you bring home a victory over a tabletop field, with your hand painted miniatures a testament to your enthusiasm (or is that, obsession?)

I worked on a team manager around the time we were playing it, though I thought I'd lost the source code when I moved house and reformatted. The good news is, I've found it! So hopefully i'll soon be able to get back to work on it. I hope to have a full team and campaign manager completed, as those that are available, though functional, arn't very good.

Subversion

2005-01-17T09:52:00.000+11:00

As suggested by my previous post, I've decided to do away with Visual Sourcesafe in favour of a more rounded source control system. After a bit of convincing, i've gotten agreement to switch to Subversion and i've spent the last few days reading up on it and this morning finally got a repository set up on one of our development servers.

You can find information about it on Subversion.tigris.com and i've got to say, it's an excellent system - especially with the third party addons like TortoiseSVN for windows shell integration. So good in fact that i've installed a local repository on my home box for version control on my own personal projects.

It's not just a good idea for when multiple people are working on a single code box, it stores the history and all changes to the source so you can roll back to any point in the history of your code - and it does it easily. Use it for a while, you'll wonder how you were ever without it.

Removing SourceSafe dependencies from a solution/project

2005-01-14T12:21:00.000+11:00

Removing SourceSafe dependencies from a solution/project

Here is a useful article that helped me today, although read the comments before carrying out the manual edit - theres a quicker way to perform steps 2 and 4.

SourceSafe is very persistant in trying to retain control of your code, which can make it quite difficult if, like me, you're trying to make the move to a different source/version control solution.

We're making the move to subversion, on my recommendation. I'll post any issues we have and the way around them for anyone who is interested.

Until then, anyone out there have any experience/problems/issues with Subversion in their workplace? (or personal projects for that matter, i'm planning on using it on my local machine to provide some form of version control)

Helping you get regular... and stay regular....

2005-01-12T10:54:00.000+11:00

After my sporadic posting over christmas i've decided to try and post on mondays, wednesdays and fridays - even if its just a five line rant. After all, whats the point of having a blog if you're not blogging?

Besides this, i'm at work during the week and tend to run into all sorts of interesting things across the net whilst working (or slacking off), so I tend to have plenty to say during the week.

It's a strange phenomena blogging. I can understand those who blog, after all - I do, theres something very... liberating about throwing out your thoughts and ideas, and opinions, where anyone can read and comment about them.

I wonder as well if the interest in reading peoples blogs is anything similar to the current fad for reality tv shows. Really Bad Reality TV Shows.

Perhaps you can look at it as a social, rather than a technological, evolution. There have often been places in history where people could speak their minds - the 'soapboxes' and similar of older day society. This is a practise which is near dead today, at least in western culture, so perhaps the blog fills a similar, perhaps deeper, role.

And of course, we couldn't discuss social ramnifications of blogging without discussing those that read blogs and feel the need to flame. By flame I don't mean reasoned, well thought out arguments, I mean F.L.A.M.E. Like my idiot american friend who didn't like my political comments.

Perhaps these are the schoolyard bullies, drifting through a mediochre life completely unable to recapture that feeling of power that flowed through them when they took the smaller kids lunch money. Or perhaps, these are the smaller kids, tortured by years of guilt and repressed rage against those that picked on them, now grabbing one last chance to swap places and attack someone else.

They should get out more.

And a Happy New Year

2005-01-10T14:55:00.000+11:00

I got to say, it's looking like a particularly good year this year. Of course there are some people still predicting the end of the world any year now, and the Tsunami has made life difficult, or over, for thousands of people. Our hearts go out to them.

Still, theres nothing left now but to wait and see.

Anyone who is a reader of science fiction will know the simple truth behind the idea of "Life imitating Art". For those who havn't yet realised it, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and Analog Science Fiction and Fact, two of the longest running science fiction magazines in the business, are both able to be bought as ebooks at www.fictionwise.com. I've always been suspicious of ebooks and the idea of selling downloadable content in the past but these I just cannot fault.

This is a great move that enables those of us for whom getting the print version was cost prohibitive (such as us in Tassie) to enjoy the best of new science fiction novellas and short stories. Also, they seem to release the magazine in ebook form about a month before the print version will hit the stores.

I've bought up the available issues of both Asimov's and Analog, if you like Science Fiction and Fantasy i'd recommend you do the same.

Google Search: nick bronson

2004-12-23T13:19:00.000+11:00

Ever tried to see if you can be googled?

It's a bit sad, second from the top of the google list for my name is a Nick Bronson who died this year, younger than me too. Makes you stop and think.

Took away a bit from the enjoyment, but in anycase a link to a post I made on MSD2D comes up at number 7, and a post I made to umbrello list (must have been a long long time ago) comes up number 8.

How do you fare? How much information is floating around out there about you?

Google Search: nick bronson

Well....

2004-12-13T09:32:00.000+11:00

It's been a while since my last update and theres not really much of an excuse, it's just been particularly busy round here. Work is going well, but theres always a lot to be done, and we're almost through the first phases of renovation at our house.

We finally have carpet, and we're no longer sleeping in the living room.

Sorry for anyone who posted a comment or sent a message that I didn't answer, i'll do my best to answer from this point on.

For those of you who might be australian or new zealand and developing software using microsoft products, check out msdn australia and sign up for the new msdn connection program. Founding members get free asp .net project space and all members get to participate in what looks to be a useful community.

As a final comment, I took a couple of those online quizzes this morning (first chance i've had to take a break in a while), so here are the results. Go have a look at them, they're quite amusing.

I am Nothing!

Which Enemy of the Christian Church Are You?

Take More of Robert & Tim's Quizzes
Watch Robert & Tim's Cartoons

I am an Intellectual

Which America Hating Minority Are You?

Take More Robert & Tim Quizzes
Watch Robert & Tim Cartoons

My Phase is Nemesis

Which Phase of the Greek Tragic Cycle Are You?

Take More Robert & Tim Quizzes
Watch Robert & Tim Cartoons

I'm Tim!

Which Robert & Tim Show Character Are You?

Grand Text Auto

2004-11-17T15:20:00.000+11:00

Grand Text Auto

An excellent blog! One of the first times i've actually enjoyed sitting down and reading one ;)

Pandromeda : Gallery : Stills

2004-11-12T09:20:00.000+11:00

Pandromeda : Gallery : Stills

Heres the Mojoworld Gallery. Mojoworld is a software packaged designed by one of the leading graphics researchers in the world, and it designs the most beautiful fractal landscapes.

Art generation is a topic I have a lot of interest in, and I plan to begin a project in my spare time to write a small procedural picture generation package and hopefully write and link an implementation of Karl Simm's genetic artwork idea to it.

I'll post it here if I get anywhere. Till then, take a look at some of these pictures.

SharePointD2D: Microsoft SharePoint Community site

2004-11-11T09:02:00.000+11:00

SharePointD2D: Microsoft SharePoint Community site

My published article on Document Libraries and Workflow control just made tip of the week ;)

Collected Quotations

2004-11-04T08:51:00.000+11:00

Collected Quotations

Some interesting Quotations I found. Here are some of my favorites.

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."

Charles Austin Beard, historian

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

Plato

"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

Sound familiar anybody?

controlling form workflow with document libraries and infopath forms

2004-11-03T09:23:00.000+11:00

controlling form workflow with document libraries and infopath forms

Hey everyone, an article of mine was published on the excellent developer site msd2d.com. It's a site specialising in microsoft technologies, like sharepoint, and there are a wealth of great articles on there.

Sorry it's been so long between posts, I've been both busy and sick, and sometimes both ;)

-Nick

Insult the stupid American?

2004-10-15T15:30:00.000+11:00

It looks like the gauntlet has been thrown down and we've opened up the Insult the Stupid American olympics.

IronChefu has taken the lead with his heartfelt post, followed closely by another anonymous poster! So, anyone out there who wants in on the action, head over to the comments section of the sunday 10th oct post and let fly. Doesn't matter if you're Australian, English, Japanese, hell even if you're another American who hates it that people like this always make you look bad, come on in and let fly.

And why not, an open invite to anyone who agrees with him, come on in - the ball's in your court. I believe in freedom of speech, even if it leads to freedom to be stupid.

-Nick

SQL Connection Errors under sharepoint

2004-10-15T15:02:00.000+11:00

Another little solution to a problem I came across whilst writing a Glossary webpart for the company Sharepoint. It's a simple part, it simply has to connect to an SQL server, do a search on the database for the term required, and format and display anything that matches.

I might do a full tutorial on the webpart itself once it's completely finished, but for now here is the solution to this error message:

Request for the permission of type
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlClientPermission, System.Data, Version=1.0.5000.0,
Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 failed

Apparently there are two possible solutions. The first is a code access security messup, which has to do with your assembly being marked as "intranet" security, which is far more restrictive then the full allowances you can have. This wasn't a problem for me, all of my assemblies are strong named and their security is fully trusted.

However it seems that the dev server that I was working on had it's sharepoint security settings at wss_minimal, which I personally think is a little restrictive for a non-production environment but there you have it. So in order to allow SQL connections you have to open up both the wss_minimal.config file and the wss_medium.config file. You need to copy the section from the security classes section in the medium config to the same place in the minumum config. Then you need to copy the <IPermission class="SqlClientPermission"...> section from the permission set with the attribute Name="Asp.net" in the medium config to the minimal config.

This may cause errors in already installed custom web parts (It did for me) and you may need to remove the dll's and possibly reinstall them. If possible, you might want to use stsadm to remove all installed custom parts and re-add them after the change.

The parts to copy should look something like this:-

< SecurityClass Name="SqlClientPermission"
Description="System.Data.SqlClient.SqlClientPermission, System.Data,
Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />

< IPermission class="SqlClientPermission" version="1"
Unrestricted="true" />

That fixed it for me. Best of luck to the rest of you.