This post stems from my initial failure to grasp the new rendering architecture of Cocos2d-JS v3, in an AquaStax coding livestream I did on 1st December 2016.  The TL;DR is that if you want to create your own custom node and render using HTML5 Canvas or WebGL API calls, you can do it like my TestNode class, here’s the source code on GitHub.

I thought you could override the draw() method in a CCNode subclass, and write native rendering code (either WebGL or Canvas) in that method.  In Cocos2d-JS v3, you can’t do that, the rendering architecture has been completely changed, and custom rendering is no longer done by overriding the draw() method.  I shall attempt to explain here how it can be done, and present an example custom node class that you can drop your own code into.

Background

We’ve used Cocos2d-x v2 at FinBlade for lots of projects, and we still maintain a large Javascript codebase for a Cocos2d-JS v2 project.  I personally have not coded with v2 in anger for some time, so my knowledge is rusty.  For my AquaStax remake (which I’m live streaming) I’d got to a point where I wanted to output visual debugging information to the screen, for some internal data structures.  In Cocos2d-JS v2, you can write your own drawing code in the draw() method of a CCNode subclass.  This was also the case when coding in C++, or ObjectiveC using the original Cocos2D framework.  This blog post from 2012 is still on the first page of search results if you Google for “cocos2d-js draw override” (as of December 2016).  However, if you do search for that term, almost all the other results are references to discussion forums, stackoverflow or github issues where people are not able to use the draw() override mechanism, which is now the case for Cocos2d-x v3.  So, what do you do to create a CCNode subclass that contains your own custom rendering code, to draw something on the screen?

Custom Node Subclass

After some time codeling for samples, examples or pointers on the latest v3 rendering mechanism, the best I could find was this reply to a question on the Cocos2d-x forums about implementing a custom node subclass.  Helpful as a start, but lacking in actual code for the quick fix, I’ve written my own CCNode subclass which contains rendering code for both the WebGL and Canvas APIs.  It’s very basic, but I think useful as a skeleton class in which you can drop your own rendering code.  If you have existing Canvas or WebGL code that’s reasonably self contained, you can just drop it into this class, create a node object from the class and add it to your scene, and it appear on the screen.  The most useful bit of information that the class encapsulates is the transformation from node relative coordinates to rendering API space.  This is not immediately obvious and I’ll attempt to explain here.

The Node RenderCmd

The new rendering architecture works by allocating a RenderCmd object to each node. Every instance contains an _renderCmd field that points to an instance of cc.Node.RenderCmd.  Each node subclass has an _createRenderCmd() method that returns either a CanvasRenderCmd object, or WebGLRenderCmd object, that is specialised to the specific rendering requirements of that node.  The following is an example based on cc.DrawNode (although this isn’t exactly how CCDrawNode.js implements the method, it serves for illustration):

_createRenderCmd: function() {
   if (cc._renderType === cc.game.RENDER_TYPE_CANVAS) {
      return new cc.DrawNode.CanvasRenderCmd(this);
   } else if (cc._renderType === cc.game.RENDER_TYPE_WEBGL) {
      return new cc.DrawNode.WebGLRenderCmd(this);
   }
}

It is the RenderCmd objects that contain all the logic to render the nodes, and they are operated on by the rendering passes of the engine.  In particular, each node RenderCmd contains a local and a world transform matrix, which the rendering logic must use when actually calling underlying native Canvas or WebGL API methods for rendering.  It is the rendering() method that is called by the renderer to actually do the drawing.

The rendering Method for Canvas

Within the RenderCmd objects, it’s the rendering method that is called as part of the render pass, by the renderer!  For HTML5 Canvas rendering, you need to implement a method like so:

   rendering: function (ctx, scaleX, scaleY) {
      var wrapper = ctx || cc._renderContext;
      var context = wrapper.getContext();
      var node = this._node;

      var alpha = this._displayedOpacity / 255;
      if (alpha === 0) {
         return;
      }

      wrapper.setTransform(this._worldTransform, scaleX, scaleY);

      wrapper.setGlobalAlpha(alpha);

      context.save ();

      // Just draw a green rectangle where the node should be
      context.fillStyle = '#00FF00';
      context.fillRect (0, 0, node.width, -node.height);

      context.restore ();
   }

The important piece of code is the wrapper.setTransform method call. This takes the Cocos2d-JS _worldTransform matrix for the node, along with the scale values, and calls the HTML5 canvas setTransform method. This sets up the canvas so that 0,0 is the bottom left corner of the node, on the canvas, and using -height allows for a value in the ‘up’ direction on the canvas. So we can draw a rectangle. Alternatively, if you don’t call the setTransform method, all calls to the HTML5 Canvas context are in the native canvas coordinate system. So, using fillRect at 0,0 will draw a rectangle in the top left corner of the canvas, and a positive ‘height’ value will draw downwards. By taking into account the scaleX and scaleY values, you can draw anything you like without the setTransform call, rendering actual pixels on the canvas.

The rendering Method for WebGL

   rendering: function (ctx, scaleX, scaleY) {
         var matrix = new cc.math.Matrix4();
         matrix.identity();

         var wt = this._worldTransform;
         matrix.mat[0] = wt.a;
         matrix.mat[4] = wt.c;
         matrix.mat[12] = wt.tx;
         matrix.mat[1] = wt.b;
         matrix.mat[5] = wt.d;
         matrix.mat[13] = wt.ty;

         cc.kmGLMatrixMode(cc.KM_GL_MODELVIEW);
         cc.kmGLPushMatrix();
         cc.kmGLLoadMatrix(matrix);

         // Put your gl drawing commands here, eg. 
         //   gl.enableVertexAttribArray
         //   gl.bindBuffer 
         //   gl.drawArrays

         cc.kmGLPopMatrix();
   }

In this version of the rendering method, the canvas context isn’t used, but rather the WebGL commands are used to handle the drawing. In particular, the
model view matrix is composed from the node _worldTransform values. This lets you draw 2D geometry as arrays of vertices in the coordinate space used by Cocos2d-JS.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that it’s not difficult to create a node in Cocos2d-JS v3 that performs custom rendering, it’s just not well documented anywhere. You need to make your own node subclass, borrowing from an existing one is easiest, such as DrawNode. Then code your own drawing logic in the rendering() methods, using either the HTML5 Canvas API, or WebGL commands, taking into account the node _worldTransform if you want to. You can use my own TestNode class, here’s the source code on GitHub.

Set and stick to a regular schedule

Without a schedule, you will almost certainly not continue for very long.  My current schedule is not very taxing, I stream once a week, on Thursday afternoons at 3pm, UK time.  Without the promise, to myself, and those few viewers I have, I would not have carried on more than a couple of weeks.  I’m now invested in the project enough that I really look forward to Thursday afternoons, and absolutely want to carry on.  If my schedule wasn’t regular though, it would easily slip.  Even promising to do ‘one stream a week’ would not have been enough incentive.  I would have get to Friday afternoon, bail, and given up the entire endeavour after a couple of missed streams.

For me, thinking I could do non-scheduled streams was also a fancy.  I’ve managed one extra non-scheduled stream in the 2 months since I started. This is mostly my other commitments, but also I’ve come to know my own incentives and motivations.  If I wanted to increase my output, I would need to promise another regular weekly time slot, to compliment the Thursday afternoon one. I have a choice of things to focus on in the coming months, and this is one I might consider, possibly a Tuesday morning slot, at about 10am UK time, we’ll see.

Schedule with me in at 3pm

Speaking clearly for an hour is hard

I decided to go down the route of streaming with a microphone and camera, and deliberately talking and vocalising my thoughts as I typed and coded.  I think this works well, and gives the best viewing experience to people wanting to watch someone code.  For a scheduled hour (and I usually go a bit over) I have to sit and talk, think about coding, actually code, debug, answer questions and try to not look like a complete wally.  I can tell you, this takes an effort to pull off, it doesn’t come naturally to me.  I’ve watched a number of other coding streamers, on Livecoding.tv and Twitch.tv.  In particular I’ve learned a lot from Adam13531 on Twitch.tv, who has streamed for 238 days (as of 22nd Nov 2016) and does so for 8 hours a day.  He’s basically streaming the entire day to day development of his upcoming game Bot Land, and it’s amazing, I recommend you go and watch, he’s awesome.

Latest stream, almost looks like I’m making a game!  Compare this with the first stream I did two months ago.

Preparation is good, but not too much

The next thing I’ve come to understand is that you don’t need to rehearse and prepare a full stream in advance.  It’s good to have some idea of what you want to achieve of course, and look up API docs in advance, or remind yourself of things you’ll need to know when coding.  But it’s actually fine to not have a firm plan, and to take the coding as it comes.  I was concerned that only working on my game once a week, for less than a couple of hours would mean I spend half of each stream catching up with where I was.  What happens though is I spend about 5 minutes catching up, along with any viewers, than I get on with it.  This helps because I don’t need much time to prepare beforehand, and whatever happens is more spontaneous.

Watch yourself back

I think I’ve said this before, but it’s so informative to watch yourself back, that it’s worth repeating.  Watch yourself back, it’s actually fun.  Learn the things you might do that don’t work so well on camera, like speech patterns or small sounds and filler words you need to be careful of.  See where you look and if the webcam is showing you off properly.  I have a tendency to look up at my cupboards when I’m thinking out loud, but if I can just force myself to focus on the webcam, it looks much better, like I’m conversing with the viewers.

Audio matters

The other thing watching yourself back tells you a lot about is the quality of your AV setup.  I started off using just the mic on my webcam (a not by any means high end Logitech C270) and it was ok, my voice was clear, but background noise was high.  My keyboard, aeroplanes flying over my house, the neighbours kids in the garden, and most of all, the whiny hum of the fan in my Mac Mini.  After a bit of reading, I got myself a lapel microphone, a little lavalier mic which clips to the front of whatever I’m wearing as  top.  It’s much better, reducing the outside noise a lot, especially keyboard sounds, and I think my voice is clearer with it.  I do need to make sure I hit the mute hotkey when I need to cough though!

I’ve also figured out the software noise filter options in OBS Studio and added a noise gate.  This cuts out the whine of the fan on my Mac Mini, so my voice is nice and clear over a quiet ambient background.

I’ve just now also purchased another microphone option, a new skin coloured headset mic which sits right next to my mouth.  I know I could get this with a PC or gaming headset, but I don’t want to sit on camera with a set of headphones on.  That’s a look a lot of people streaming go for, especially when they’re gaming, but I would like a more open face view.  In testing, this mic gives me a better voice quality, and much less keyboard chatter.

Webcam is less important

I don’t think I need a webcam much more expensive, or higher in quality than the one I have, a pretty cheap Logitech C270. The one thing I’d maybe like is a wider field of view, but so far, it’s not something I’ve found effects the perceived  stream quality much at all.  It’s much more important to get happy with the audio than the video, for live code streaming at least.

I also use an old IP camera I have sitting around to present a side/back view of myself, showing my triple screen monitor setup, and my actually typing.  This only puts out a fairly grainy 640×480 video image, but it’s more than enough for context and scene.

Testing

I’ve found that in order to be comfortable with all these tweaks and things I’ve been doing, it’s not enough to just use OBS in local record mode, and then watch the video back.  The record settings can be different to the streaming settings, and I want to know how the setup I have looks when actually streaming over the net.  To this end, I followed these instructions and setup a local nginx server on an old machine I have.  I made 2 stream endpoints that can be configured in OBS as different profiles.  One endpoint is called ‘test’ and just saves the stream to a local .flv file.  The other endpoint is ‘live’ and uses the nginx RTMP proxy feature to push the stream onto Livecoding.tv, and hence broadcasting live.

All I need to do to test out any new stream feature is switch the OBS profile to ‘test’, then start streaming.  When done with the test, I watch the .flv files back directly in VLC.  Then when I want to go live, I switch to the ‘live’ profile.

Audience engagement

This one is a much larger topic, and I’ll likely get a few more blog posts out in the coming months!  When I first started streaming, I wasn’t concerned with a chat bot, or any sort of screen overlays that announce new viewers, or followers etc. After a short time though, that attitude changed, both from watching other streamers, and observing first hand in my own stream.  Both Livecoding.tv and Twitch.tv have a chat room feature that lets the streamer interact with viewers live. Having a bot in the chatroom is common on Twitch.tv, but less so on Livecoding.tv, probably because there are not as many ‘off the shelf’ bot solutions for the XMPP protocol (Twitch uses an IRC protocol).

I’ve decided to code my own chat bot, using Node.js and Electron.  I originally used NW.js, but discovered it has some issues with transparency on different platforms.  Just 1000 lines of code and I have a bot that greets users and followers as they enter the chat.  It also announces them on the stream with an animation of their avatar.  Viewers can give me a rating, right there in the chat, if they like.  They can also get an up to date lines of code count.  These are just the first few features I’ve coded, but am planing on adding more as the weeks go by.  I’m also adding some ‘off the shelf’ features to the bot, like a decent front end UI for configuration, so I can produce a binary package.  That way, it might be useful for non-technical streamers in other areas.

What’s next?

Blimey, that’s a load of old words written.  What’s next then?  Obviously I’m continuing with the regular stream, and I have a couple of options for expanding.  I can either schedule a new timeslot in addition to the current one hour.  Or I can think about streaming to multiple services at once.  I’ve been thinking about dual streaming to both Livecoding.tv and Twitch.tv, either using my custom nginx server, or a 3rd party service like Restream. This is not a trivial undertaking though.  It will require some careful scene preparation, like for example, do I include a chat window from both services on the screen (taking up space), or a hybrid chat output window?  Ideally my bot needs to support both services at once, which is going to mean coding that support first.  We’ll see, I’m going to get the input of my friends from ShareUpSoton first, and make a decision from there.

As promised, I streamed myself on livecoding.tv, for over an hour.  The first time experience was very enlightening, and I learned a lot. You can watch the archive video below, or on my livecoding.tv channel page, although the video cuts off a little earlier than the stream did for some reason!

The setup was pretty simple, using my Mac in single screen mode, streaming the whole desktop.  I did have 2 cameras though, I used a webcam for my face and the microphone, but I also had a network (IP) camera pointing at my 3 monitors from off to one side and slightly behind.  I think this added a bit of context, and allowed people to see my more normal coding setup, which is using 3 monitors, although you couldn’t make out the actual detail from this camera.

Starting Out

I had some initial streaming bandwidth issues, using the Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Studio.  I had set the upload bitrate to 1500 as per the documentation, but I had only done this using the ‘Basic’ output settings window.  You need to switch the window to ‘Advanced’ and then update settings there.  I actually had direct help from a real person at livecoding.tv support, within the stream chat window, and it was invaluable.  I don’t know if this is something they do for everyone when they first stream, but I can’t express how helpful it was, simply awesome customer support.

After some tests with speedtest.net turned up a lower than expected upload rate, I had to drop my bitrate down to 500 kbps to prevent any dropped frames.  I was downscaling the output video to 1280×800 (I think), and the capture/stream rate was 10FPS.  There was a definite blur in the onscreen text, and I have seen other people stream much cleaner text.  The downscaling was based on the documentation I followed.  I thought I should have been able to stream at a faster rate than that, my broadband connection can sustain almost 3Mbps upload during offpeak hours, but those were the settings I needed in order to not drop frames.

Results

After the setup issues, I had a stable stream for over an hour.  I’m very happy with the result too, both my own ‘performance’ and the content I chose, although in the end, there was very little actual coding on this first session!  There are things I’d like to investigate to get a better quality.  My monitors are 1920×1200 resolution, which as an aspect ratio of 16:10, is far less common than 16:9.  I’ve read quite a bit about streaming at different resolutions, scaling, black borders, etc. but it all relates to streaming games.  I’ve not found many useful resources on the ideal setup for coding streaming yet!  When watching the video back on my 16:9 laptop, it was fullscreen, but with the blurring I’d mentioned before.  Audio quality was surprisingly good given my webcam mic, and I probably obsessed more than necessary over the keyboard typing noise.  The typing was loud, but it didn’t overpower my speaking.

Check Before You Stream

After the bandwidth issues with the stream, the next day, I discovered that my wife’s PC (an modern Intel NUC running Windows 10) had been spewing out data at an alarming rate for almost 2 days!  I hadn’t realised we’d left if powered on (it’s silent), and for some reason it’s hadn’t gone to sleep.  According to my router logs, it had uploaded over 50GB of data over the course of a couple of days.  I spent most of this morning trying to figure out what it was doing, and it seemed to be sending the data to Microsoft servers.  It was possibly OneDrive going bonkers, or some sort of P2P sharing as part of the Microsoft system update process, although I know (and double checked) that the sharing aspects of that were turned off.  I still don’t know what it was exactly, but it seems to have stopped now.  This much uploading could very well have caused Virgin Media (my ISP) to start throttling my upload speed.  They have a somewhat complex traffic management policy that kicks in based on uploaded data thresholds over rolling one and two hour periods.

The lesson here is to know what your network is doing before you start to stream!

After The Stream

I think I got into the swing of things, but it did occur to me that this first stream was very preliminary, and didn’t really contain a lot of content.  Lots of me chatting, but not a great deal of code.  I did however get through a number of important things that you do at the start of a project.  I have watched the video, and noted down the time codes for any elements I think would be useful for someone coming to the video, but not having the full 1:11 to watch it all.  I’m going to make sure I update the video description on livecoding.tv to include all these interesting time codes.

I’m also going to include a new page section in the top bar of my blog, called Stream, that will be a list of all the archive videos, and the useful time codes.  That way, I can keep track of things as I go on.  I’m also going to use the live stream embed code to put the full stream experience right here on the blog.

Checklist

I created a list of things that I need to do before each stream, so I can be up and running a little quicker!

1. Turn off unnecessary network devices (like my wife’s PC) and check my network traffic monitor.
2. Turn off my Amazon Echo.
3. Make sure my Mac notifications are turned off or set to ‘do not disturb’.
4. Check my notes from the last stream, remembering where to start off.
5. Get a list of new subscribers since the last stream and welcome them at the beginning.

See Me Soon

So there you have it.  Thanks to the folks at ShareUpSoton, I actually created some Internet content, something I’d not done in a long time.  I do hope if you’ve read this, you can join me for future live streams or watch me in the videos.

What

• Me live streaming programming, Javascript, Cocos2d-JS, 2D Puzzle Game, AquaStax Remake

When

• Thursday Afternoons, UK Time, 3pm (and afterwards via the video archives)

Where

• My livecoding.tv Stream

Tell Me More

Twitch and YouTube

Watching people stream themselves on YouTube or Twitch is very popular, especially for gaming.  Personally, I’ve not yet been able to engage with anyone streaming themselves playing games.  Gaming live streams cater for a different type of person, someone who wants the spontaneity, unpredictability, and potential for unplanned events to occur, along with sharing that experience.  I do like watching gaming channels, but ones that have planned content that I can enjoy at my own leisure, like the simulation videos from Squirrel and Inside Sim Racing.

Live Streaming

I do find the idea of live streaming a creative process very interesting, and enjoy watching streams from artists creating traditional image based artwork, digital art, both 2D and 3D.  It appeals on two levels, one is the act of creation itself, unfolding live, and the other is the technical aspect of the tools and processes they use.  TV has known this for years.  I grew up watching Tony Hart draw, paint and create.  There was a solid reason that Twitch went with streaming Bob Ross when it launched it’s Creative section.

Can you watch a coder?

As a coder, even though I’ve done a significant amount of work in the creative sector (games), I’ve never really considered myself to be all that creative.  There is no doubt that a lot of creativity goes into making games, but my part in the commercial process has always felt more mechanical, mathematical, technical, driven by information and data, not my creative ideas.  I do actually create though.  The act of programming is, at a base level, creating text computer code (although it can just as often involve removing code, usually for the better).  And there is, of course, far more to the job than creating code.  Ultimately, after all the designing, coding, compiling, resource creation, pipeline processes, debugging, documentation, building, QA, submission and deployment, it’s us developers that create a tangible product.  Maybe someone would be interested in watching that, streamed live?

To this end, I’ve signed up at livecoding.tv, and am about to embark on streaming the development of a personal project.  I’m still working out the details, but I intend to start by streaming at least once a week, for up to an hour.  If things to well, maybe I can find additional times.  One concern I have is that coding tends to involve a lot of thinking, and Googling, and Stack Overflowing, and not much talking, and probably not even that much actual writing of code.  How many lines of code do you write in one hour?  Not that many I’d bet.  I guess we’ll see what (if anything) works out to be watchable, and I suppose I can always learn to think out loud.

What am I going to code?

The other big issue when doing something like this is to decide on what exactly to code!  I have a project I’ve been mulling over for literally years, and it’s a remake of a puzzle game I did back in 2007, called AquaStax.  I personally loved ‘Stax’ as we called it, it wasn’t perfect, the code was cumbersome and over complex in many ways, but the end result was a solid, fun game.  Lots of potential for expansion too, in terms of extra levels, that never came to pass.

I recently played around with the original code.  I used a system called CodenameOne, that was surprisingly effective at taking the original Java (J2ME) sources and getting them up and running on my iPhone.  I could have continued with this route, fixing the touch handling, audio, graphics resolutions etc. but I think ultimately I wouldn’t have learned much, and spent a lot of time making a ‘port’ of my old game.  So I think it’s time to code it again from scratch.  A lot of the old logic will still be valid, and being originally written in Java, it should translate to Javascript pretty easily.  I’m going to start by re-using all the old image and sprite assets, which will only give me a low resolution game, but I can do it in such a way that it should hopefully be easy to scale up the graphics to something high quality, in the event one of my old artist buddies fancies revisiting some old sprites!  I’m going to use the Cocos2d-JS game framework (part of the Cocos2d-x family), something I have a little experience in, but I’ll benefit greatly from turning out a project by myself using it.

Wrapping it up

I think I’ve said before that our end product isn’t just the code and the program itself, but also the history of the project over time.  If you look into the revision control system, that history from day one onwards is what we create.  It’s tangible and real, and unlike the layers of pencil and paint hidden beneath the topmost visible layer of a painting, you can go back to any point in time whenever you like, and use that point as the start of a new branch in a different direction.

A video history of the actual development, from the screen of the programmer, is going to be an interesting record to have at the end of a project too.  I’m looking forward to seeing if any metrics or info arise from the streaming process, and you never know, there might be helpful comments from watchers too, if I get any!

I’m also going to see if I can visualise the project after each session too, using Gource, the software visualization tool.  I’ve done this before at the very end of a project, but hopefully it will be a good indicator as each stream finishes of just how much progress has been made.

Here’s the Gource video of a large mobile game project I did some years ago, as a taster:

I’m Still the Same

For me personally, nothing has changed in how I like to play games, to quote myself:

…on a big screen, from the comfort of my lounge chair, with a proper controller in my hands.

I still do it with my Xbox 360.  I still do it occasionally on the Ouya (it has some fantastic games, and not all available elseware), but the hardware has aged, and new good games are few and far between.  However…

Fire TV

My new bit of under the TV kit is an Amazon Fire TV, which is not a million miles from the Ouya.  It’s a much newer bit of hardware of course, but it plays games very well, with a pretty decent controller.  The differences are that the Fire TV is much more at home playing audio and video media, with the remote control being perfect, and the Amazon App Store for games and apps.  Ouya’s website currently claims 1130 games, and amazon.co.uk has 829 games for the Fire TV, and to be honest, the indie content is not as good as Ouya’s (no Towerfall Ascension for example).   The elephant in the room though is that I already have a comfortable billing relationship with Amazon for most of my entertainment media, including Amazon Prime membership.  The Fire TV lets me listen, watch, play or read it all.

Iteration

The price point of the microconsoles means that I’ve bought two in the last two years, and I’ll probably pick up more in the not too distant future, if they offer something compelling (Apple TV with controller and App Store games anyone?).  The Xbox 360 is 10 years old (I’m on my second) and there’s still nothing compelling about the next generation.  It might be No Mans Sky on a PS4 or Gears of War 4 on the Xbone that makes me upgrade to the current generation of AAA console, but I’ll wait and see.

I expect we’ll continue to see iteration in the hardware, functionality and user demographic for microconsoles in years to come.  At some point, clipping one to your belt and plugging a VR/AR headset into it will seem normal!

I’m sure Julie Uhrman will be able to look back at a lot of things and say ‘we did that first’.

Starter for $99

I backed the Kickstarter quite early on, for a first production run consumer unit, not a development unit.  At the time, I didn’t really think it would amount to much, and the media has been the usual hot and cold.  I did get mine before launch though, and I’ve been playing on it for a couple of weeks now, and it really works for me.  Here are the main reasons I like it:

1. I like console gaming.  Sitting in a comfy lounge chair or on a sofa,  using a wireless controller, and most of all, I like using a decent sized TV.
2. I don’t like physical media for games (or music and books for that matter).
3. It turns out I don’t like mobile gaming on my iPhone or iPad.  This might seem odd considering what I do for a living!
4. I do however really like the kind of games you predominantly get on mobile devices.

Relaxing at Home

Point number 1 is a personal preference.  I’ve never really liked PC gaming, and these days it feels too much like work, sitting at a PC.  Even if I hook a controller up, or run my laptop through my TV, I can’t be bothered with the waiting times and pre-play delays.  Give me something I can power on, press one or two buttons and be playing.  I know consoles aren’t perfect, they’ll often want to update themselves, or the game will also need to download an update, but most of the time I can make a cup of tea while that’s happening.  After all these years, you still need to babysit PC updates.  How many times have you clicked to perform an upgrade, thought, I’ll go and have some lunch now, and got back to a popup asking you to accept the terms and conditions, rage face…

The Disc is Dead

Point number 2 is another personal preference, but the media shift is undeniable.  I personally got rid of all the CDs in our house over 15 years ago.  I didn’t have a big collection of movies on DVD or VHS, but what I did have went not long after that.  Books were slower, and I still do have a fair few on bookshelves around the house and office, but when buying new books these days, I get annoyed if an eBook isn’t available.  Don’t get me started on games though.  It pisses me off royally when I’m forced to buy a physical disc.  Games on Demand for Xbox 360 I hear you say… Yeah right,  even with my disposable income, I’m not paying £50 for a new release when it’s in the shops for £27.  There’s nothing worse than having to swap discs before playing a game too.  Even though I can ‘install’ a game on my 360 hard drive from the disc, I still need the disc to run.  30 years ago, I had to wait 10 minutes or more while loading a game into my Sinclair Spectrum from a cassette tape.  Sometimes even today, it can be 10 minutes before I can play a game on my Xbox 360, isn’t progress great?

Big Fingers, Greasy Touchscreen

Point number 3 surprised me, that’s for sure.  Although many games work superbly on mobile touch screen devices, and are designed exactly for them, for when you’re out and about, on the move. However,  I game mainly at home.  When I’m at home, why would I squint at a tiny portable screen?  I actually have 2 TVs in my lounge, one primary TV for watching programs and movies on.  The other an old (smaller) screen for gaming, attached to my Xbox 360, and now the OUYA too.  I also have an HDMI splitter box so I can actually use either TV, but mainly game on the old TV, while my wife watches the main screen.  So, I’m not short on big screen space to be able to game on at home.  When I’m out, I’m either with my wife and we’re enjoying some activity together, or I’m at work. If there’s ever a point where I could actually play a mobile game (like when I’m on a train), I always find reading more my thing, which I will happily do on my phone or tablet.  I’ve spent a long time now creating mobile games, and even though we’ve always strived to make them accessible and quick to get into, it’s still quicker to open the Kindle App and pick up my current book than it is to start playing a game on my iPad.  Be it starting a new session of a game, or loading and continuing from some previous point.  My brain can pick up where I left a book in no time at all, even mid paragraph.  Getting into a game seems to require a context shift that for me, doesn’t happen quickly.  Maybe it’s my age, or the complexity of games compared to the written word, I don’t know.  Either way, even though I have spent a small fortune in games on the iOS App Store, I prefer playing them on a big screen, sitting in a comfy chair, with a gamepad (and quite often, a beer

The TV’s King

Point 4 follows on nicely from that last paragraph/sentence.  I’ve have indeed spent a small fortune in games on the iOS App Store, I shudder to imagine what the total is if I were to add it all up from the last 5 years.   I really like the huge choice of games, the immediate downloads, the quirky, the indie, the imaginative, the innovative, the strange, the good, the bad and the ugly.  The different monetisation models, single player, connected multiplayer, asynchronous multiplayer, pass’and’play, it’s like rule 34 for games.  I know Apple hold a tight leash, and not everything goes, but so much does go to make for an inexhaustible supply of gaming experiences.  Until now, I’ve not dipped much into the Android market as a consumer, but I imagine it’s much the same, if not even more free and open.  Compared to the AAA cruise liners, piloted by marketing department budgets,  give me the speeds boats, yachts, RIBs, kayaks and coracles of the mobile and indie marketplaces any day.

Finally…

So, I’m excited by the OUYA because it lets me sample, play (and pay for) the great games of the indie and mobile ecosystems, but on a big screen, from the comfort of my lounge chair, with a proper controller in my hands.  I’ve read all the criticisms, and so far, I mostly disagree with them.  The box is cheap, which affords it a lot of slack in my mind, but even given that, the box is a solid performer and I like the controller, it feels balanced and comfortable in my hands.  The games I’ve played so far have been fun, varied and of good quality, with high quality graphics and sound.  I’m sure there’s the dross, but it also serves to elevate the good stuff.  Let me make up my own mind, I’m an adult, and I like doing that.

Try This

If there was one thing I’d add to the system, it would an option to automatically download a new game for me to instantly try out (for free) the next time I powered the console up.  Even better, what if I were to get an alert on my mobile phone, telling me there was a new game waiting for me to try when I got home?  As a developer, I’d pay to be included in that service, and as a gamer, I’d be keen to get home and try out a new game.  Safe in the knowledge that it didn’t cost me any money or time to try, and I’d almost certainly give it a look.  I might even like it and pay for it…

So, there you have it, thanks for reading, I’m off to play Beast Boxing Turbo, it’s ace.

The VT220 is an RS232 serial terminal.  It can take a bit of work getting a PC to talk to one, especially if you’re running Windows.  Linux is more suited, but the howto can still be a bit of a chore to wade though if you’re not a sysadmin guru.  Not to mention that most modern PCs don’t have a serial port on the motherboard these days!  OS/X is also a possibility, and this inspiring blog post is a great resource if you have a Mac.  Since I had a Raspberry Pi to put to some use, I thought I’d connect it up and use it as a gateway to my other systems.

There are essentially 2 ways to connect an RPi to a serial terminal.  One way is to use a USB<->RS232 serial cable.  These are readily available and can usually be used with any PC or Mac too.  You plug the USB end into one of the RPi USB ports, and the DB9 (9 pin) connector at the other end into your terminal device.  If you have a VT220 like me, you’ll need a DB9 to DB25 adapter, but again, these are fairly easy to get (eBay again, or if you’re like me, your man drawer probably has one).  You still need to configure the RPi to recognise this new device as a serial port, and provide a login terminal on it.  The Linux program that usually does this is called getty.

The second way to connect the RPi to the terminal, and the way I chose, is to use the serial pins on the GPIO header.  I did this to keep both USB ports free, and I think it’s the easier route, at least the details are easy to find and follow.  The RPi has a native serial output on 2 of the pins on its header connector, but they do not work at the +/- 5 volts needed for an RS232 connection.  Rather they are +/- 3.3 (often called TTL) volts, which means you can’t just wire up a cable straight to the VT220, you need to use a level converter chip.  The chip made just for this purpose is the MAX3232, and you can make your own circuit, or for a few pounds you can get a board and connector already made up (eBay again)!  This site has all of the details you’ll need to configure the RPi and connect up a MAX3232.  You can see in the picture below that the MAX3232 board I got can be powered by a mini USB connector, or you can use the +5v and ground pins on the RPi header pins, which is nice and simple.

The last thing you might need to do to get the system working is to configure the connection parameters of the terminal itself.  All the DEC terminal documentation is available online, and the VT220 has a ‘set-up’ key which instantly enters the terminal into a setup mode.

So there you have it.  A MAX3232 TTL to RS232 converter, DB9 to DB25 adapter and a Raspberry Pi.  The old school character resolution on the VT220 can be a bit limiting if you’re used to modern PC terminal emulators, but using the gnu screen program, you can manage many machines easily.  Playing Nethack as it was intended in great fun too…

After quite some time ticking over, things are now looking great for FinBlade in this new year and we’re going to need more programmers.  I’m not initially looking for vast amounts of experience in specific areas, I’m thinking a Junior Coder role that would suit a recent graduate or a student looking for a gap year.

With that in mind, here are some tips if you think you’d be interesting in working for FinBlade as a programmer.

Write Code

Ideally, I’d also like to see it, bring me short examples of code you’ve written.  You’re applying for a job as a programmer, you need to demonstrate you can write code, simple.   That’s really just the start though.  Code needs to be managed by a source control system, tell me about the ones you’ve used.  If I can’t access your code via a publicly accessible system, just bring some printouts, along with a printout of the commit history.  I don’t want to see reams of fanfold paper though, just some snippets to use as a conversation topic.  What’s more important is that you can demonstrate some knowledge and understanding of developing software.

I also use a short programming test, usually before someone actually comes in person for an interview.  I do this online, using Collabedit, it takes about 20 minutes.  There are numerous opinion pieces on the usefulness of this sort of thing, but I’ve found it a real time saver and a good indicator.  Here’s an actual example question to see if anyone is paying attention.

What does the following code extract do? [2 Points]

   int k;

   for (k = 0; k < 5; k++);
   {
      printf(“%d”,k);
   }

If you can demonstrate any sort of further understanding of source control systems, that’s also a big plus for me personally.  Show me a Gource video of a project you worked on and my eyes will light up!  If you are an experienced coder, and have nothing but bad things to say about source control, I expect I’ll be looking elsewhere!

Tip: Show me the code, and the source control.

Read Programming Books

Many might disagree, but I find that when it comes to learning a new technical area in enough detail to start coding in it, the right book is the best way to do it.  It’s true you can learn from online tutorials, examples, YouTube videos, blogs, API documents, you name it, but unless you go to a specific online course (like Khan Academy) you can easily get overwhelmed by unstructured content.  I find that an author led,  linear, directed, learning experience can get you very comfortable with a new area.  Take for example the book “Learning Core Audio: A Hands-On Guide to Audio Programming for Mac and iOS“.  There is nothing like this available on the web, at least that I could find.

You can read books for fun too.  Obviously you can surf when you want to be entertained without thinking, I also surf the web when I’m looking for some specific information.  API details, example code, support or help from Stack Overflow, that sort of thing., but this is work to me.  I’m expanding my knowledge, but it feels like work.  Reading through a book like “The Elements of Computing Systems” was genuinely fun, and as I turned pages, I caught myself thinking “Ahhh, would you believe that?”.

Tip: Tell me about the books you’ve read lately.

Read Programming Blogs

If you’re reading this, you get a point straight away.  Doing some research before an application or interview is essential.  It takes a few seconds of Google Fu to look up FinBlade and find out who I am and what I do.  My blog tends to go for long periods without any updates as do many, but have a large enough pool in your RSS reader and they’ll always be interesting and cool new things.  Here are a few I find essential reading:

• #AltDevBlogADay
• Fabien Sanglard’s Website
• Coding Horror
• The Hacks of Life
• John Ratcliff’s Code Suppository
• Programming in the 21st Century
• MindFlock Ltd.
• Code Monk
• Passion for Coding

Keeping up to date with developments, technology and simply picking up new ideas to enhance your mental tool box is part of what it is to be a professional software developer.

Tip: Tell me which blogs are in your RSS reader.

Final Thoughts

Be very careful with recruitment agencies and use them with great thought.  There are many good ones, but there are also certain ones whose emails are permanently filtered out of my inbox!  For small companies, approaching them personally is almost always the better option.

Apologies if I don’t reply to emails for a long time.

Extra points if you create your CV with LaTex

The Place

Vanderbilt Hall, Grand Central Terminal (GCT), New York City.

The Occasion

The unveiling and first public display of (a model of) the Titanoboa, a 40 foot long, gigantic prehistoric Snake, the largest of it’s kind ever discovered.

The Purpose

To unveil the giant snake model, exhibit it in for 2 days and to promote a TV show created by the Smithsonian Channel about the discovery of the Titanoboa fossil.

The Idea

After the initial unveiling, press and news interviews, photos and speeches, the public were to be invited to play a specially developed version of the classic Snake, on a huge projected display (in the order of 25ft by 14ft).  Over the two days, the highest scoring player for each day would win a cash prize.

The Game

We (FinBlade) had been contracted to create the Titanoboa: Monster Snake game for Web and Facebook, iOS Universal and Android, and then the Grand Central Terminal event.  The game-play was closely based on the classic game Snake, people most likely being familiar with the Nokia mobile phone version.  We created the Web/Facebook game using Flash technologies (coded with AS3 in FlashDevelop and using the Flixel engine), and the iOS and Android versions using Cocos2d and Cocos2d-x respectively.

We coded a modern high quality game with high end 2D graphics, a very detailed main snake animation, moving water and environment (foliage) effects, animated food items,  online high score tables, smooth frame rate and high quality audio.  We also built extra Web and Facebook features (using web technologies) for Smithsonian Networks and their affiliate partners, such as DIRECTV. Including custom game branding and other elements, an online sweepstakes with data entry form, integration with the TV show trailer video, send-to-a-friend emails, Facebook sharing and ‘like gate’ features.

The GCT Event

So, that’s all the background out of the way.  How did we take things from there to the Grand Central Terminal event?

Platform

We re-used the AS3 Flash game from the web, and created a high resolution build of the game running at 1920×1080.  Since we routinely create games at multiple resolutions for mobile and web, this aspect of the game was pretty straightforward.  The various game art assets (including the snake animation) were created in 3DS Max and we rendered the graphics to 2D sprite sheets.  Doing this, the artists work at high resolution and output whatever scale sprites and assets are required.  They actually worked at above the resolution needed for the HD version of the game.  The snake sprite frames were 80×80 pixel cells and the artists rendered from Max at 160×160 before scaling down.

Performance

The web game resolution was 720×570, not too high, and was designed to run on normal machines in web browsers.  The frame rate struggled a bit from an optimal 30 FPS on older P4 machines and low end netbook type devices, but we think it was worth it for the graphical look of the game.  However, running a full HD resolution build did need a high end PC, with a quality graphics card being the most important element.  The game required a Core i7 3GHz and a 1GB modern graphics card.  We ran it in the Flash Player 11 Standalone, both as an SWF and a ‘projected’ .exe and 30FPS was no problem.  With such high resolution graphics, memory usage was high, at between 200-300Mb RAM usage varying by game state.  The final binary SWF was 30Mb in size, 3 times the size of the 10Mb Web and Facebook SWF files, but that didn’t really matter, and neither did the RAM usage since it was going to be run on a dedicated machine.

This video was taken with Fraps, on my development PC which is fairly beefy, and it struggled to get a smooth frame rate.  Without Fraps recording though, the game runs nicely at 30 fps.

Game Logic Changes

For a public event, the game logic needed to be tailored very specifically.  People playing the game were going to be briefed or guided by a representative before they played, so we removed the main menu/front end of the game entirely.  The experience was much more ‘arcade’ like, with the game running on a ‘attract loop’ showing the high score table, then a simulated game-play screen, then looping back.  All the time, the ‘play now’ text pulsing at the bottom of the screen, and a large banner stating the real cash prize to entice people to play.

Pressing any button on the joystick started the game, with the customary 3-2-1-go countdown and brief instruction text.  After that, the game play was the same as the web/mobile builds, with one exception.  On the web/mobile builds, we made the game-play area wrap around.  If the snake moved off the left of the screen, it’s head appeared on the right.  The disadvantage of this for a public game is that anyone could walk away and leave the snake cycling around and never ending the game.  Also, we wanted to keep the play sessions short to prevent people from staying on too long.  This did require a graphic update to the play area to add a ‘shoreline’ around the edge to make it more obvious that the snake would crash.

Auto Skip Screens

The final piece of game-play update was in relation to timing out and automatically skipping screens.  As well as the cycling attract mode screens, after a player had crashed in a game, they are taken to a ‘game over’ screen giving them details of their play time, how long their snake grew and their final score.  We added a 30 second timeout to this screen in case anyone left the kiosk/podium at that point.  After the game over screen, the players entered their initials using the simple up/down/left/right movements on the joystick.  This screen also had a timeout of 30 seconds in case anyone wandered away.

High Score Server

We implemented  a leaderboard function for all the games using some PHP and a MySQL database, running on an Amazon EC2 instance.  The same server also collected the data for the online sweepstakes, for which we created an HTML form with some Javascript functions to make the data entry user friendly.  For the GCT event, I simply re-used the leaderboard code without change, and ran XAMPP (for Apache and MySQL) on a ‘back end’ PC.  Managing the leaderboard (deleting entries for example) was simply done with phpmyadmin.

Settings Screen

Since the exact network setup for the machines wasn’t known to me beforehand, I needed to make the server IP address (as used by the game to connect to the server) dynamic.  There were also several other settings that it made sense to make tunable without having to restart the game, so I implemented a settings screen where such things could be changed.  The screen was accessed by a keystroke, so the keyboard needed to be attached.  I did need to access this screen on a couple of occasions (see below) during the days, and we switched the big projected display to the ‘sizzle reel’ during this short time.  In hindsight, it would have been better to implement a remote interface to the game (using an embedded web server for example) that would have allowed me to make these changes without needing access to the PC at all, or needing the display switched over.

High Score Reset

One task that I had accounted for was adjusting the leaderboard during the game-play sessions, and this could be done easily on the ‘back end’ server PC using phpmyadmin.  However, removing the top score from the leaderboard did not automatically reset the current ‘high score’ value in the game, which was maintained locally in the game code.   This was a legacy of the code, and something I could have changed so that it was automatically synced to the leaderboard top score, but in the end I did not do this.  I implemented an easier to test manual reset of the local high score using the settings screen.  This worked, but did mean that when I needed to remove a high score from the leaderboard (due to the player being ineligible to win the prize), we had to switch the projected display off the game for a few moments, so that the settings screen was not projected for all to see.

Soak Testing

This is utterly essential, and I was very happy I’d taken the time to implement a proper soak test.  The event was planned for 2 days, with the game being played, in public, on a big screen for 10-11 hours straight.  It needed to be bullet proof, no memory leaks, no slowdown, no crashes.  I’m only human after all though, and during the event, very early on the first day, for some reason, there was a null object reference in the code that flashed up an exception dialog.  The operator was very quick on this though, and cancelled it with the mouse.  The game carried on without incident (I suspect it was in a short lived network thread) thanks to the Flash runtime shrugging such things off.  Had I coded the game in C++, it probably would have bombed straight out!  Thankfully, it never happened again, the game ran for 2 days without incident.

For the attract mode, I had already implemented some A* path-finding code so the snake could hunt down the food, automatically, whilst avoiding itself.  This wasn’t a perfect snake AI, since it would still go down dead ends, but the attract mode only needed 30 seconds of play.  Using this, and some random numbers to drive the name/initial entry, I set the game on soak test playing automatically.  All the way through, starting the game, playing till snake crash, then entering scores into the high score table and looping back to the attract mode, ad infinitum.

Slowdown

After only a couple of hours of soak testing, the frame rate of the game started to slow down, badly.  It turned out to be a tiny network connection ‘spinner’ I’d implemented as a constantly looping timer task.  This thing was only flashed on the screen for a fraction of a second, but when removed, I wasn’t cancelling the loop timer, so each one was leaving an invisible ‘zombie’ task.  After a couple of hundred times through the game-play loop, there were 100’s of them eating CPU time!

Once these little zombie timers were sorted, the soak test ran for several days without incident.  A perfectly regular memory trace, and rock solid frame rate, even after days of looping.  I’ve a lot to thank the Flash runtime for there, but as a quick search will tell you, Flash garbage collection doesn’t do all your work for you!  Like I said, apart from one minor incident at the start of the first day, the game didn’t hiccup for 2 busy days of play, the soak testing proved it’s worth.

Never Rely on Wi-Fi in a Busy Public Space

As a great incentive to play the game, on each day $1000 prize money for the top score was up for grabs.  Obviously this meant keeping high score data, but the game was already setup to do that.  The other element was recording the details of the players who managed to get a high score so they could be contacted if they were the winners of the prize.  We decided to re-use the already written sweepstakes form for data entry, linking it to the high score table.  The idea was to use an iPad to show the form and get high scoring players to enter their data.

In theory this was a good solution.  iPads were already going to be used by ‘brand ambassadors’ to show the iOS game to the public, so using one for the data entry made sense.  However, for some reason or other, the Wi-Fi did not prove reliable.  We had the wireless router (a Linksys WRT54G) pretty close to the gaming PC and the operator with the iPad (only a couple of feet away in fact), but the iPad just constantly lost the network, or refused to connect to the server PC.  I had constructed a simple web page that constantly refreshed the top ten leaderboard scores as hyperlinks that linked to the data entry form with the high score already filled in.  While it worked, this solution was great, simple and integrated with the game, but it was completely let down by the unreliable Wi-Fi.  Even though the Wi-Fi was a private, secure network, I think it was simply not reliable in the public space.  There were at least a dozen other networks in the same area (in fact, I wrote a lot of this post connected to the free Apple Store Wi-Fi) and I think the lesson is not to rely on Wi-Fi for public events.  In our case, pen and paper forms stood in and were quick and 100% reliable.

Know Your Controller

This is the main lesson I learned from the event.  We left the choice of controller up to the production company, who were supplying and installing all the kit.  They went for a simple Atari style digital stick, which was a perfect fit for the game.  It wasn’t overwhelming for people walking up to the game, and had a cool red LED glow (it was USB powered), also no array of confusing buttons, just one.  We used JoyToKey to drive the Flash game since Flash doesn’t have native game controller support, and this was actually a very good solution.  We had tested the game using a XBox 360 controller d-pad, and it played fine.  When testing with that, we should have realized that it highlighted the need for a quality controller.

The particular model of Atari type joystick used didn’t have micro switched internals and it’s directional response wasn’t quite as good as I’d have liked.  It had a bit of kickback if not held carefully, and missed directions were frustrating to less experienced players.  It certainly wasn’t all bad though, the sticks turned out to be robust enough for heavy use, were comfortable to hold, and after a minor tweak to smooth the direction response jitters, things went pretty well.  Some pretty good high scores were had at the end of the day!

In hindsight, we were the game developers and we should have sorted the controller out ourselves and I should have taken them with me, or specified to the production company exactly what to get.  I was expecting a more ‘arcade stick’ like device and it hadn’t even occurred to me there were other options.  I ended up making a last minute tweak to the game input logic to smooth out the direction response, which did help a lot, but could have been avoided, we should have picked up such issues much earlier.

Finally…

Wow, if you’ve got this far, thanks very much for reading.  I can say honestly say that being involved in the Titanoboa Grand Central Terminal event was an amazing experience.  As a game developer, there’s nothing more awesome than seeing people from all walks of life stepping up to play something you’ve created.  As I said at the beginning though, lots of people were involved, my part was quite small really.  We at FinBlade were contracted by Civic Entertainment Group who oversaw everything, there was the Smithsonian Channel for the content and Production Glue designed and executed on the two days, from setup to teardown, at the event itself.  I’m sure there were numerous other parties involved too, these kind of events need a lot of expertise.  Someone must have made the massive cloth scrim, put together the foliage, the people behind all the marketing, the list goes on…

I’ve made several attempts to create a video DVD for a friend recently.  He’s a neighbour without a modern PC, but he has a decent new digital camera and it takes both stills and videos.  He asked if I could burn a set of the videos from the camera to a DVD for both archival and easy viewing on his TV…

Maybe you’ve tried this before and are shuddering at the thought.  Or maybe (like me) you are thinking, how hard can it be?  Well, somewhat surprisingly I think, I’ve yet to encounter anything so frustrating on a PC. It beggars belief that what must be an extremely common task, one for which PCs are specifically sold in many cases, takes so much effort and specialist knowledge. Maybe I’ve missed something fundamental in my attempts to use different pieces of software to complete my task, but I’m an experienced computer user, and if I have missed something, I’d like to know what it is!

All the pieces of software I’ve used so far have been either free with my Operating System, or free with my DVD/Blu-Ray burner. Some time ago I bought a high quality (and priced) Pioneer BD-RW drive that burns pretty much everything, up to 50GB BD-RW discs. It came with the almost ubiquitous CyberLink PowerDVD software, and it’s DVD creation cousin PowerProducer. At first glance, this software looks like it should do all I need, although the interface isn’t exactly friendly, but it claims to support MP4 files, like those recorded by the camera I’m using. This seemed to hold true, and in a couple of hours I had a DVD with a photo slide show and several videos all created and prepared in the program. I’m not totally naive when it comes to DVD burning, so the initial test was to create the DVD structure in a folder on the hard drive first, which was simple enough. I tested this folder in PowerDVD, but there wasn’t any audio in the video segments, hmm. Well, it might be a PowerDVD issue, so I then burned an actual disc, which again, was pretty simple. I put this in my actual DVD player (a multi-region Pioneer DV444K) and still no sound, so something definitely went wrong with the DVD creation.

Here’s where it gets painful because within PowerProducer, the videos play fine, with full audio, in both edit and preview modes. So it was a case of finding some way to convert the raw video from the camera into something PowerProducer could import and burn properly. Since the error only showed up after a complete DVD was created, it took quite some time to find a successful pipeline. I know numerous open source and freely available AV conversion and processing tools, such as ffmpeg, mencoder, Handbrake, VirtualDub and others, but I thought I’d see if there was anything a bit more user friendly. In the long run, my neighbour might well get a new PC and want some advice on how to perform this process himself, so a more consumer friendly tool might be worth trying to find. After a fair bit of searching and testing of different tools, I would equate the act of attempting to find a half decent, naive user friendly, PC video conversion tool with standing in front of a raw sewage outfall pipe. You wouldn’t believe the amount of shit available. I couldn’t find a single piece of software even worth linking to in this post as potentially useful, let alone anything I’d actually recommend to anyone.  Every website I visited made me feel dirty too, I’m glad I know what I’m doing browsing the Internet.  The amount of pop-ups, click scams, porn offers and no doubt drive-by malware install attempts my numerous Ad-Blockers, Virus Checkers, Safe Surfing Shields and common sense (surfing in a VM) prevented must be off the chart.

I did at one point wonder if Apple would have anything useful, and maybe in the past, iMovie might have done what I wanted, but not any more.  It seems DVDs are a no longer relevant, which I have no complaints about myself, but I’m sure there are still many people who still might like to use them.