Xblog

You're in the wrong place....

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:26:00 +0000

OK, long time no post(see last post).

I'm back and I have a new domain, I'm using WordPress and I have all the content from this site moved seamlessly to it's new home, and I've started adding new stuff already.

So what are you waiting for go to :- Http://BlackHatSoftware.co.uk.

Lack of interest...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Thank you for taking the time to read this entry for the foreseeable future it will be the last.

I know two thirds of my viewing public ad there both called Paul, the last I have no idea about, but as I have had very little in the way of feedback on the comments and because this blog has failed in it's original purpose which was to motivate me to work toward my goal of completing the Bert Higgins project I am moving my development blog to an undisclosed location, if you are interested in seeing what little progress I'm making then ask me and I'll send you the details.

T.T.F.N.

Get your XBLA design docs here!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:56:00 +0000

Documents of Newly Published Xbox Live Game Made Public - Jill Duffy[09.03.08]

James Goddard recently pitched a game to Microsoft for inclusion on Xbox Live Arcade. His game, Shred Nebula, was accepted. One of the crucial steps in landing this achievement was creating two official documents: a pitch paper and a manuscript required by Microsoft known as "60 seconds of gameplay."

I think it's a good read....

The Pirate's Dilemma

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:07:00 +0000

With everything in the press about illegal downloads, selling secondhand games, and overzealous copy protection.

I thought I'd share this with anyone who cares...

Power tools and how to hurt yourself.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

That's right I have been doing man things today, Wife told me a few weeks back that if I didn't sort out the shelves in the hall cupboard that I would feel her wrath, it was quite nice, so today she asked if I would sort out the shelves once and for all...

I had a brief thought that I should put my boots on before starting, I didn't, anyway I was well into putting up the supports in the fore mentioned cupboard when I realized I had not picked up the bag of screws. So I put down the power drill and walked out into the hallway towards the stairs and turned the air blue as I kicked the door frame with my left foot not mind you with any of the major toes O no with my little toe the smallest toe in existence and I KICKED the door frame with it.

In a grump I was halfway up the stairs to go get my Boots when Wife finally shows some concern and says she had better check it before I cover it up, to my relief I had actually damaged it. I've taken the skin clean of the top/front of my toe, don't ask, I don't know either.

Only thing is I made myself look like a total girly wuss because I have the most ticklish feet in the world and everytime Wife touched them to try and mop up some of the blood, I kept squealing, the pain was the normal I just stubbed my toe pain but she almost got my foot in her mouth every time she touched my foot.

I love Wife very much. she puts up with alot, like when I'm being Mr Poopyhead. She does not deserve a kick in the head for trying to help.

later she let me use the nailgun to fix bits of wood together :-D

I'm still alive, even if I don't feel like it...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:15:00 +0000

Well I have plague(read cold) again and as such have taken the day off work, then I found an email from Pyro pointing out that it'll be a month since my last update. So I'm typing this wrapped in a blanket, sweating and surrounded by soggy tissues just so you get a nice mental image.

In the last month I have been working at my new job in Bristol and the commute time is rather long. I'm out of the house by 6:40am and home by 7:45pm and asleep by 10:00pm to be up again at 6:00am. A small side effect of this is that I don't get to work on my projects until the weekend where I have to fit them in around spending time with family.

I have managed to get a fair bit of the MapEd program done and sorted out a couple of things I didn't understand about C#, like I can now data-bind arrays of custom classes to windows form controls like TextBoxes and I'm getting better at writing my own custom Controls.

Over on the sidebar menu you notice I've changed the "Dodge" and "Bert Higgins:Redux" links to a "Projects" link under here you'll find the old pages and a new one for MapEd.

When I stop hacking my lungs up I'll try and do more regular posts.

A WinForms missing method

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:12:00 +0000

I'm sure I can't be the only person to need this so here is a function I couldn't find :-

private Control FindControl(string strControlName)
{
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(strControlName) || this.Controls.Find(strControlName, true).Length == 0)
        return null;

    return this.Controls.Find(strControlName, true)[0];
}

Usage :-

for (int p = 0; p < CurrentMap.Depth_Tiles; p++)
{
    string strOutput = String.Format("CheckBox Controle cbShowLayer{0} - ", p);

    if (((CheckBox)FindControl("cbShowLayer" + p.ToString())).Checked == true)
        MessageBox.Show(strOutput + "checked");
    else
        MessageBox.Show(strOutput + "not checked");
}

If anyone has a better solution let me know :-)

NEW JOB!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:02:00 +0000

After only 5weeks of looking I've managed to get a job yay me!

I'll be working in Bristol city center, so train or car both will be expensive. It's working for a company called Innogistic Software Plc, apparently I'll be working on something to do with distribution of Fire fighting hardware?? It pays better than the last place which it has to because of the distance I'll be traveling, and it's a six month contract but then again so was Source and I stayed there for 18 months.

so once again...

YAY ME!!!

Map-Ed v0.0.1.16569

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:08:00 +0000

I've been hard at work trying to get a new job and working on the Map Editor of Bert, screen shot right.

The thing that has proven to be tricky is that the Bert Higgins uses over 1900 blocks at 16x16 and over 1500 Sprites at 24x24 this makes for rather a large overhead in the map editor writing this as a windows forms application with the standard objects is impossible because the application slows down too much with all those objects, so I wrote a new component to view them based on this article by Marc Clifton.

As a whole I'm using the work done in Nick Gravelyn's series "The Tile Engine Tutorials" as a bases for my editor, the problem with this is that the way I'm storing my map data and nick's method differ massively and he is using individual sprites for his tutorial(I'm only up to part 4), there are also other things that I'm doing differently to nick and features that were outside the bounds of his tutorials, like I want to have an auto wall feature so you select your wall tile and just draw with it the connecting sprites are inserted where two or more blocks are next to each other, and I'm using a group system to insert objects larger than a single tile, and the random select to reduce the repeating effect, I'm also trying to come up with a way to add in the auto edging for grass meets water or dirt meets concrete.

All in all The Map Editor is shaping up to be far more complex than the game, but I should end up with something that can be used for far more than just Bert.

Until next time...

Long time no post

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:31:00 +0000

Oops, I haven't been posting as often as I should, a few things have happened since my last post.

I quit my job at Comtec (Because I just wasn't happy there).
Wife has opened her own on-line shop selling Gothic and occult stuff.
I've found the joy of Portable Apps.
XNA Creators has launched the new site in Beta.
I've started looking at how I can convert Dodge to work on the Xbox360.
I've been working on the Editor for my Big Game.
I've been working on a few ideas for my CMS application.

It's Here! It's Finaly here!!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:52:00 +0000

Well I don't have one yet but ThinkGeek are now selling the Optimus Maximus Keyboard!!!!

a snip at $1,589.99

Dear Santa,....

Re:XNA boss defends Xbox Live Arcade

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:31:00 +0000

I read this

Microsoft XNA general manager Chris Satchell has rejected the suggestion that Xbox Live Arcade has lost the initiative when it comes to supporting independent games.

on gamesindustry.biz yesterday and thought what the hell has sony or nintendo done for the intependent developer?!?

Admitadly people have been playing with the Wii controler doing home projects but I haven't seen anything about Game development on ANY of there systems, correct me if I'm wrong.

If I planed ahead, I wouldn't get in to this sort of mess.

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:01:00 +0000

This week I've been working on the engine that runs the BertWorld and found that I had got myself into a corner again. The upshot of this is I have now written out a few of the components that I use regularly, as proper GameComponents and DrawableGameComponents, in a Game Library that I can re use with little code to add the the main Game object.

This includes a logger service that can be called from any component to write to a log file just give the filename when you create the object then you can call one of three methods write, writeline & flush it inherits from IDisposable so that I just need to call the dispose method in Game.dispose override method to ensure that the file buffer is emptied and closed.

In other news Nick Gravelyn has setup XNA Wiki Nick had this to say about it:-

My goal is for the community to no longer have pastebins, forum posts, and blogs where they have to dig around to find useful code that isn’t in published samples or tutorials. I would love to see the community have a single repository for all this useful data.

I have already added my FPS drawable component in to the mix, and within 7minuets SimReality had changed it and continued to change it, after I got over my initial "YOU BASTARD!" reaction I can see that the changes he made were sensible and I have indeed Incorporated them into my FPS component, I now have to get round to updating the tutorial to reflect this.

I just had to share

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:34:00 +0000

I've been thinking about getting a new job for a few weeks now and then I saw this and I just want to know was it his comment or something else the scared them?

My first XNA tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:12:00 +0000

Just to let people know I've added a tutorial to the XNA section entitled "Tutorial001 - FPS Drawable Game Component"

But like the murphy's...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:46:00 +0000

...I'm not bitter, so there's a new Dodge in the downloads with fixes and no more full screen.

!Warning! XNA RANT !WARNING!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:42:00 +0000

<rant>
Since I published Dodge over a week ago I've asked some friends to check it out partly to see if it works, but mostly because like everyone who writes games in XNA I wanted to hear someone say "that was fun." To get people to try it out I put up a zip file with the .EXE and the graphics and sound files so you just unzip it to a temp directory and run the program simple :-)

I told a bloke in work that I had finished a game and even after I told him how simple it was and that it was my first and generally played it down as much as I could he still asked where he could get it, I was happy. I told him you can download it from my website he nodded I told him you just need DirectX9c, .NET 2.0 and to install the XNA framework and your good to go and he said "I've lost all interest already...why do I have to download all that?" and I couldn't answer him. Later I got an email from a very good friend saying that he would try out dodge I was over the moon because when I showed him the original he said "it's simple but strangely addictive..." so I was looking forward to hear what he thought of the new one, he replied today and I just wanted to kick him in the nuts, all he could say was...

I've tried it out and it works well (apart from one glitch). When you get to final release versions of software is there anyway you can include all the.net stuff etc. in the installer? You can't really expect people to check down a list of support software to see what they need to install.

...Now if I could write all my software in assembler so that it didn't need anything else to support them I would but I can't so I'm not going to try. XNA still seems to be in the realms of “developer only” stuff, not that it's got bugs in it, but that Microsoft think that only people writing software for XNA will want to see anything written in XNA. Because the people developing in XNA already have everything they need to run XNA there's no need for the redistributable to actually check that your computer has everything it needs to run.

If I want someone that is not a developer to run what I have written then it's up to me to build an installer that will do Microsoft’s job for them or I could pay someone for an install packager to make it for me.

This in not something that has been upsetting every developer that works with XNA since day one rather every developer has been happy to only show there work to people that have an interest in XNA and don't say "well I can't be bothered to download the support files it's your job to figure out that I don't have them and install them for me" quickly followed with "I hate it when installers put loads of crap on my system that I don't want..."

If I really wanted non tech people to download my stuff I would make an installer that would also wipe there bums for them and install Google Bar, Yahoo Bar & a selection of spyware on their systems but as I have only asked people that apparently know what they are doing I don't think I need more than I have done.

I know there is the .ccGame thing but you have to have XNA working on your system before you can do that. Microsoft very Kindly tell us exactly which DLL's are required from DX9c for XNA to work and even tell us the Guid's for the different versions of XNA but I just want XNA to be supported in the one click publish feature of Visual studio 2005 or even 2008.

I'm not working with XNA because I want to learn how to make installer packages, I want to write Games that other people can play. I can deal with the fact that I need to pay to get it working on an Xbox360 but there needs to be more of an incentive to write for a platform where I know people will download games for a quick play around.

If anyone knows of an install packager that will do this that I don't have to spend a week figuring out how to make a distributable copy of my game then let me know, I know you won't but I can ask.
</rant>

Dodge v1.01

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:27:00 +0000

Added a new version of Dodge

Changes for this release:-

Esc Now quits anywhere.
Fixed error in new level, teleports now carry over + 1.
Tidied game logic.
Added game instructions.
Added some sound.
Added Hi score table.
Tidied up the HUD.

New Screen Shots

I've got something to show you...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:56:00 +0000

Last night Pyro, Rae, Webber, Manda, Wife & I all went to town for the second meeting for the society of "People that don't hit Dave when he says something stupid". last nights events were food followed by comedy. We all seemed to enjoy Mr Lee Evans trying out some new stuff which was an education.

I also made mention of a little something I had written this week to Webber and made the mistake of saying I'd upload it today. The little something is a game I first wrote back in '92 in pascal for DOS, it's a simple game called Dodge and the idea is that your this little pink dude who has to avoid getting trampled by the other things in the level by getting them to walk over the mines. As an alpha I know there is loads to fix but the meat of the game is here.

I think I needed to get this out as quick as I could because I was starting to lose heart with writing and having nothing to show for it.

And here are some screen shots for you.

Two weeks well spent...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:01:00 +0000

I finished Crysis, and started a new project, don't worry Bert is still going to happen I just wanted something I could knock off quickly(note to self don't make rude joke).

"What is it this time?" I hear you all drone. Well it's still a C# project, but not a game. It stems from an idea I had back when I was writing P.A.S.S. as an AJAX app @ Source but I just never got round to doing anything about it.

It's a desktop app for site administration that needs little or no server tech as all the pages and support files are compiled on your system then FTP'd to the server. Some things can't be pre-generated, so there will need to be some server side scripting but nothing that could be exploited by a hacker.

The biggest drawback to using PHP-Nuke and other CMS apps is all the admin software is on the site just begging to be exploited, and lets face it how often do you need to update your site from a computer other than your main PC? plus all CMS software reliy on a database of some description and that opens up for SQL code injection if the scripts aren't written properly.

Another thing is that with classic ASP there was no native way to upload files and even with PHP uploading more than 5 files is a pain.

I worked on something similar to this for Pyro back in the days when I had alot of time on My hands and the less said about that the better, but it could be adapted to do that job to ;-).

For the moment I'm trying to K.I.S.S., starting with the RSS module, it'll take your posts and then compile the HTML site to view them same as blogger dose.

You'll know if I get it up and running because I'll replace this site with a new one

Hi honey, I'm home...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:58:00 +0000

I've just got back from my holidays in Florida with the wife, had a great time and I don't want to go back to work tomorrow :-(

Anywho I'll probably be wiping my system in the next few days so I can put in my 233Gb Hdd as my primary boot. My original plan of installing a 40Gb Primary and 233Gb secondary so I could move the users Dir over to the Secondary drive failed Badly and I keep running out of space on the primary drive. I also bought Crisis and GTA: San Andreas while I was in the Sates so I want to wipe my system and rebuild before I start playing them.

So my plan for this week is:-

Monday
Go to mums and get her Laptop(her system needs wiping)

Tuesday
Wipe my system and re-build.

Wednesday
Finish rebuild.

Thursday & Friday
Review my notes for Bert.

Saturday
Month end site update.

New Page!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:01:00 +0000

As you might have spotted I've added a new page to the side bar menu. The Bert higgins:Redux Page is where I'll try to keep a current feature list for each of the applications, at the moment there is the Game and the Map editor. The game has screenshots from v0.0.1 and less on the feature list but the MapEd also on V0.0.1 was easeir to pin down the features but there are less in the way of Screenshots.

WideScreen Joy!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:49:00 +0000

It's been pointed out to me one more than one occasion that I am a little on the slow side, So imagine my joy when I spotted that Bert was designed to be wide screen.

Stay with me here wide screen is just a non square aspect ratio view, more accurately width longer than height. The screen output for Bert was 320x200 and that gives us 320/200=1.6, so if I keep this aspect ration I can have Bert in it's original layout and the XNA framework already has a simple scaling system built-in.

At the moment I'm working in 640x400 but with the code I just added I can restrict the screen res to wide screen only and there is no extra code to scale the output to compensate.

Now in a minute in a valley over by yer...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:02:00 +0000

In Welsh:-
O BRA! It's F*ckin' funny in it like! ---> TAFF WARS
In English:-
O My! This is rather amusing. ---> TAFF WARS

I was so embarised I just had to do something....

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Henry) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:53:00 +0000

Wife and I spent a rather pleasant evening with Pyro & Rae last Friday, and I got a chance not only to play with his new XPS system but also to try running Bert on it I was mind full of the fact that from an external point of view it looks like I have done more than nothing but most of the work up to now has been code conversion.

Anyway we started by running the Prerequisites Installer I mentioned in my last post, it said that Pyro was good to go, run Bert, CRASH! Not good, so we installed the XNA 2.0 Redistributable and then ran Bert again, CRASH! Still not good, so I asked if he had DX9 installed on his new system(Vista Pre-installed) "No, I have DX10" he said proudly, so I installed DX9c ran Bert and it worked!, Sweet :-)

Unfortunately this screenshot pretty much sums up what he saw in it's entirety...When both Rae and Wife looked they giggled, the woman sign for "is THAT it?" they may as well have just pointed and laughed. To say I was a little hurt is an understatement so the very next day I added...The Main Menu, which now means I can get to the Main Level Via...The Briefing Screen, it sits there waiting for the player to press Space Bar, which now loads...The main Level. Or if you select the pacifier to get to the...Tutorial Lobby.

I feel better now :-)