tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38527172024-03-08T02:42:21.969-06:00Programming-In-The-OneBy day a mild-mannered software engineer - by night a caffeine fueled coding machine. This includes my log of development activities and observations regarding Pacific Islands Campaign - Guam.
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<a href="http://grognardsims.com/v/prod01.html"><img src="http://i711.photobucket.com/albums/ww112/billn6/GSI_BGG_banner.jpg" border="0" alt="GSI's PIC-Guam Game"></a>Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.comBlogger216125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-56827453878167913892015-02-03T10:19:00.000-06:002015-02-03T10:20:29.752-06:00Back Again for a While...
I noticed today that this blog was no longer accessible. It seems my gmail account was disabled and that took the blog with it. Silly Google. I may have to look into moving this into a more reliable provider.
In any event, I've been busy. Personal update. In 2014
I attained the Microsoft C# Specialist certification.
Wound down one scrumBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-49276240420373529112013-12-18T10:54:00.000-06:002013-12-18T10:54:03.108-06:00First Life Recap - April 2012 - December 2013 I see that I have not posted in a long time here.
There are some reasons for that. To sum up, I've been too busy with First Life (IRL) to worry about Second Life (blogging, etc.).
What happened? In no particular order:
My wife gave birth to our son.
We sold our house.
Moved across town to an apartment.
We had Lennar build a new house; moved in.
A re-org at the office Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-47200555268743628332012-04-08T20:34:00.005-05:002012-04-08T21:38:03.710-05:00And Then It ExplodedI'm working on the AI code for PIC-Guam. In the last few months I have been able to spend a few hours optimizing the fire combat AI. I was able to get it to work reasonably well by replacing or changing a lot of LINQ statements from my "hello world" version from last year. This included movement code based on locating the phasing side's unit for maximum combat effect. It Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-41732227308996854042011-11-06T14:36:00.004-06:002011-11-06T15:02:14.279-06:00Game Development Status 11/6/11I am continuing to work on the prototype for the AI and UI for PC PIC-Guam. This weekend I wrote the evaluation function for the Fire Combat AI, hooked the AI up to the game system, and got the Japanese to conduct a Defensive Fire. I'm filling in around the edges now. The UI is not displaying color overlays to indicate the target hexes of the AI's fire combats. Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-28606699269515976122011-10-09T09:43:00.002-05:002011-10-09T10:16:23.255-05:00Game Developer Status 10/9/11I've done about 8 hours in the last few weeks. Not as much as I wanted, but not too bad. I implemented a fire combat AI prototype based on brute force as I mentioned in my previous post. I took all the shortcuts I could, primarily basing it on LINQ. This worked, but was very slow. For three firing units and 7 potential target units, the code produced 392 fire Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-8571095794759455142011-08-28T13:26:00.003-05:002011-08-28T13:51:49.030-05:00Game Development Status 8/28/11
Doing some work on the prototype for PIC-Guam today. I did an hour yesterday; trying to build some momentum. I am implementing a prototype AI.
Today I had to refactor some code pertaining to movement footprint generation in order to reuse it in the AI.
My first approach to this AI is brute force. I am traversing the phasing unit list, generating all Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-87102771853494242011-08-12T13:06:00.001-05:002011-08-12T13:08:09.216-05:00Welcome to the Next Level
I got promoted to Supervisor, Software Engineering this week.
Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-73663277517890796452011-07-09T04:37:00.003-05:002011-07-09T04:46:33.369-05:00UpdateIt's been almost a year without blogging. Let me sum up.I changed jobs from Senior Developer to Architect and have been holding down a Development Supervisor's position since February. I participated in a due diligence for an acquisition. I performed technical reviews on two chapters of an upcoming MS Press title. I scrubbed the rules and playtested several titles for Grognard Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-55603747159087623322010-07-17T22:07:00.002-05:002010-07-17T22:09:52.900-05:00All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy...As Batman said, man does not live by crimefighting alone. I'm throwing some time at Battle Dawn these days.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-91064012746540863762010-07-10T09:51:00.006-05:002010-07-10T10:41:05.280-05:00PIC-Saipan/Tinian Game Review Part IChris sent me a review copy of Pacific Islands Campaign - Saipan/Tinian at the end of April. I finally found some time to review it this week. (After the release date...sorry, Chris!)The maps are beautifully executed and easy to read. The counters are good: the die cuts are crisp and well registered, and the counters punch easily with no separation. All theBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-85158028561034660212010-06-15T20:37:00.003-05:002010-06-15T20:52:57.545-05:00Ready, Fire, Aim (Oops)I'm working on the fire combat model for the PIC-Guam prototype. I added a FireCombat class to contain the information about the combat. I added a Turn class with lists of FireCombats for the US and Japanese fire phases, and added a list of Turns to the Game class. Then I got down to work. I added a bunch of code to support combat results table (CRT) processing. Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-36681287404696607642010-06-13T20:56:00.004-05:002010-06-13T21:57:40.202-05:00Fun with Zones of ControlI'm working on elaborating the movement rules by including an awareness of Zones of Control (ZOC). Every unit exerts a zone of control into the surrounding hexes. This has the effect of stopping movement, and triggers Defensive First Fire. I'm implementing movement in the prototype so that entering into movement mode identifies all hexes the unit can move to by Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-1083099802733580432010-06-12T21:39:00.004-05:002010-06-12T22:10:22.850-05:00Rolling Along...I put in another hour and a half on the PIC-Guam prototype today. I am finishing up some additional features for movement. Today I was working on the rule that says a unit can't move from one Zone of Control (ZOC) directly to another. I moved the Hexes from the Game class to be a static member of the Hex class...this makes it easier to access everywhere I need it, and it turns Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-44906534402218429702010-06-12T08:49:00.004-05:002010-06-12T08:58:29.727-05:00Game Development Status 6/11/10I spent only a few minutes working at lunch today, but I got the stacking code working. Movement now takes into account stacking limitations. Effort to date for the month is 4 hours 17 minutes.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-29224938580082698942010-06-05T08:15:00.001-05:002010-06-05T08:15:50.066-05:00PIC-Guam Game Development Status 6/5/10 This is my first blog post using Windows Live Writer.  It may take me a while to get the formatting right… I’m continuing to make progress on the prototype for PIC-Guam.  In May I spent over 26 hours working on the game.  I have better momentum now that I’ve had since the last Origins trip for PC Eylau in 2005. My post last October was Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-71271593002842334972010-06-02T22:03:00.001-05:002010-06-02T22:06:19.362-05:00PIC-Guam Movement Demo VideoBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-29171774977868862312010-05-29T13:05:00.002-05:002010-06-02T22:06:04.347-05:00 First PIC-Guam VideoI've started making some videos that demonstrate features of the prototype of Pacific Islands Campaign - Guam.The first one covers phasing of the game turn.The next one will cover basic unit movement in the prototype.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-71630892924662667062010-01-29T09:19:00.003-06:002010-01-29T09:33:42.539-06:00Catching Up...My daughter Emily was born on 11/18/2009. 8 pounds, 10 ounces, ten of everything she's supposed to have ten of, etc. She's doing great.Since November I've put in maybe 6 hours of effort on the prototype for PC PIC-Guam. I'm happy to point out that the board game is available for purchase. I recommend that game. It has a clean game system, good art, and good research. It's fun Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-90337454862201844662009-11-08T13:49:00.002-06:002009-11-08T14:02:53.590-06:00Game Development Status 11/4/09I've been thinking about priorities lately. There are several things I want to work on for the game and limited time in which to do the work. By my own plan I am supposed to be prototyping the UI, the game system, and parts of the AI, pretty much in that order. I have spent time lately on supporting infrastructure tasks such as familiarization with MVVM and Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-25463396684041125722009-10-17T10:59:00.003-05:002009-10-17T11:06:23.587-05:00Game Status Update 10/17/09OK, here's the deal. PC Eylau is not dead, but it is on the shelf. As Miracle Max said in The Princess Bride, it's only mostly dead. Though there has been a shakeup at Clash of Arms that could lead to publishing the game without an AI, I think the game needs to be re-implemented as a C#/WPF game in order to produce a stable product. Taking into account the time Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-45309483731297238092009-09-20T12:29:00.001-05:002009-09-23T12:49:19.606-05:00LSC Career Fair-Tech DayAt the NHDNUG meeting on July 16th, Tonya Britton gave a brief presentation on the LSC Career Fair-Tech Day. This event will take place on the 24th of September. It combines a career fair (bring your resumes) featuring local employers with presentations on technology issues.For more information about the conference at LSC-Montgomery, contact Tonya Britton, program Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-15153718715507801172009-07-08T19:53:00.007-05:002009-07-08T22:05:04.674-05:00D2SIG Meeting NotesI attended the D2SIG meeting last night at the Microsoft offices in Houston. Claudio Lassala from EPS gave a good talk on Data Binding in WPF. He came prepared with a number of good examples of different techniques that explained not only the current thinking on data binding, but also some of the earlier techniques that fell short. Claudio knows his stuff, and dived down Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-42410852833893571642009-07-05T22:20:00.001-05:002009-07-05T22:25:25.183-05:00First Life and Blogging FrequencySomeone invited me to join Second Life a while back. I responded, "I'm still busy with First Life."I don't post as often I would like, but that's because I'm still busy with First Life.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-80711252577791745952009-07-05T21:59:00.003-05:002009-07-05T22:09:32.874-05:00PC PIC-Guam Status 7/5/09I've written the high level design for over 80 percent of the decisions to be made by the AI, so I've switched over to working on the UI prototype for a while.Today I got the code working for the cursor position on the map, and I adapted the PC Eylau code for mapping the cursor position to the map hex. I also figured out how to fix some problems I'd had with that code inBillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852717.post-83082807279827420262009-07-01T21:39:00.000-05:002009-07-05T21:48:05.105-05:00"If I Had Another Hammer..."Eric Dornenburg wrote a good article on counter-arguments against using technology (an ESB in this case) just because it's cool.If all you have is an RDD or MMD (Management Mandated Development) hammer, everything looks like a nail.Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18007048836132046085noreply@blogger.com0