Most Gamefest Presentations up for download.

Friday, September 05 2008 - 0 comments

If you are into game development Microsoft has released the audio from this years Gamefest there is a special section on XNA. That should be full of information about the next version of XNA 3.0 but the sessions on Certification is what I really want to know more about. What does it take to get a game through cert and just what does Microsoft require of its games.

I just found that the talks on Certification are only for people with XDS accounts, that sucks. I still hope that MajorNelson will do an interview with someone on the Cert team at Xbox sometime soon.

Thanks to The XNA Team Blog for the info about the presentations.

Not too Caffeinated just messy

Thursday, August 28 2008 - 1 comments

A blog post from Blogus Maximus (aka Chris Williams (aka Charity Fragathon guy)) inspired me to take some pictures.

Its good to know I am not the only one who cant be bothered to throw their cans away.

It does not have to be caffeinated, and hey I though we stopped stocking water.

Super caffeinated

Programmers love Red Bull

Fish + Red Bull = Fail

Events I think are cool

Thursday, August 14 2008 - - 0 comments

There are two events coming up in September that I will be attending that you may want to check out.

The Charity Frag-a-thon  is an event being hosted by the Twin Cities XNA User Group. Along with helping Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota the event will have a Halo 3 tournament with prizes. I am not the best Halo 3 player but I am hoping that the people that show up are not to great. For me this is also an chance to bring a non programmer friend of mine to meet some of the people I know from work and the user groups.

Charity Fragathon

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 (6-10PM)
Microsoft
8300 Norman Center Dr, Suite 950
Bloomington, MN 55437

The other event is the Minnesota Developer Conference on September 9th. For me this is the first paid conference that I will be attending I am hope that this event will provide more than the free Twin Cities Code Camp coming up in October. There are still spots open for both MDC and Code Camp, the code camp is free and an event not to miss and right not you can get a big discount on the last of the MDC tickets.

 

Bravo Move

Tuesday, July 29 2008 - - 0 comments

Over the last weekend the company I work for Sierra Bravo moved to a new office. It was a experience that I hope not to repeat any time soon. Moving all the stuff took 3 large moving trucks, a team of 9 movers and 2 trips for each truck and that does not even cover moving the data center. The internet connection is still a little flaky so the blog may be down from time to time over the next few days.

XNA Community Games can ean you money / XNA Community Games will cost you money

Wednesday, July 23 2008 - - 2 comments

Today Microsoft announced how distribution of community games to Xbox live will work. Basically you will be able make money from games created with XNA Game Studio. I have mixed feelings about this on one hand it gives everyone even everyday game creators the chance to make money. This is a great will be a opportunity for a lot of people but is it the right direction for XNA?

Microsoft has been calling Community Games the YouTube of gamming a place where you can put your games and anyone can download it. That means you get a lot of bad games and a few really great ones. So where would YouTube be if you had to pay for downloads?  My guess is that you would have never heard of it. Will Community Games have its equivalent to a video with 10 million views or will the prices keep away the masses. What happens to the everyday gamer gets Rick Rolled they download and pay for a game that is junk, will they take a chance and download any more? I don't think they will. Another factor that has made XBox Live Arcade such a big success is the ability to download a free demo.

Since blog posts with a bunch of questions are boring I will say that I think charging money for all Community Games is not the best move. Only time will tell but I really hope that it turns out to be a big success.

Pokemon

Tuesday, July 22 2008 - , - 0 comments

In the past week and a half my daughter and I have picked up a pretty bad Pokemon habit. It started with one deck and now we can build 3 full decks and have a large stack of extras. We even have our main decks in sleeves. This last weekend we attended the League at The Source in St Paul MN. We also attended a Tournament out in Coon Rapids MN at Outpost 2000. I was surprised on how helpful everyone at the events was we got a lot of great tips on how to build better decks.

Some things that are not so clear are the rules. The rule book that you get with the starter decks does not cover every thing or it is not very clear about some of the rules. Another thing that would be very helpful would be an evolution chart. I found lots of card lists but nothing that shows all the stages.

Here are some simple things that we have learned.

  • Be sure to buy a Diamond and Pearl starter pack. The cards given seem to be stronger than the older packs.
  • If you can find it buy one of the tins that contain 4 booster packs and an Lv.X card that matches one of the cards you have in your deck. The Lv.X cards are very powerful evolutions and most people you battle will have at least one in their deck.
  • Add more support and trainer cards. The starter packs are heavy on basic Pokémon and light on support and trainers. The best cards to add would be ones that would allow you to search your deck for basics or evolution cards. This way you will not miss the basics you take out and with them you get to choose the cards you want.
  • Sleeves have also made things better; my daughter has an easier time shuffling her deck with them.
  • Learn to play with dice. Many people use dice as damage counters and for coin tosses. Dice are easy for kids to use and much more random then the plastic coins that are given in starter packs.

New TwinCities .Net Group

Wednesday, July 02 2008 - , - 2 comments

A new .Net User group will have its first meeting next week on the 8th, it is the TwinCities Developers Guild. The first meeting will have a cookout before hand so you know I will not miss it. I know the free food is a great reason to go but a better reason is for Jason Bock's talk about writing better code a talk I saw at the last Code Camp and I think it was the best talk I saw that day. This new group (guild) is looking to be an very interactive and community focused.

Speaking of Code Camp the next one is comming up in October on the 11th and it is another not to miss free event. A coworker of mine will be giving a talk on old legacy database system called Pick. So be to sing up for the event even if you are not into old software there will be many great talks on many differnt subjects.

Blog update to Graffiti 1.1 mostly painless

Monday, June 30 2008 - - 1 comments

Just got done doing an update to my blogging software Graffiti version 1.1 and it went alright. I had some problems getting the database updated to the newest version and some issue with the permissions on the server.

If you are doing an upgrade here are my tips:

  • Backup first (yes I did do that one, all the other tips I found the hard way)
  • To update the database if you are using the vistaDB or Access file you need to copy the clean database file from "Data\Utility\Migrations" and upgrade that one the one that installs with 1.1 will error out on update. (The instructions on the site were not too clear about this, and I wonder why I have not setup a SQL database for this yet)
  • Check the file permission for all directories after you have added the new files. I had many directories that were not set correctly when I went to rebuild the site.
  • Last thing I suggest is to Zip up your backup and keep it.

 

I really like Graffiti so far with their new $99 pricing I am thinking about purchasing a license, just don't think the wife would go for me dropping the money on that.

FYI: its not really a "Blog" software its more of a CMS that can be used to make a blog.

I Need a few more hours in a day

Thursday, June 26 2008 - , - 0 comments

The daughters Science Fair is tomorrow, got a fair amount of Space Math done but the game is still not done yet. There are some bugs with the way the ships position them self on the screen and I got a short list of features I still want to add. My goal after the fair is to add those last bit of features and get the game up on community games.

Finishing the game will have to go on the back burner until the end of July. Got a large project due in less than a month that still has two months of work left on it. Its not going to be fun what makes things better is some of the specs for a third party web service and design elements are not final.

Yawn

Thursday, June 19 2008 - , - 0 comments

HomeServerBookYesterday the Microsoft Across America truck was in the Twin Cities. You may wonder what they are talking about and what swag they are giving away well if you are like me save your time and don't go. The presentation was mostly about Vista and Office 2007 and for some reason the presenter went on about Vista drivers and software being slow because it is not programmed correctly. The swag is not Office 2007 or a t-shirt as you may have read on some blog posts about when the tour began, however I did get a cool kids book about Windows Home Server (I really grabbed two, one for work one for home) you could also enter a drawing for some software (the drawing was not for  Office or Vista).

  • Not for tech professionals
  • Not for people that want swag
  • Is for people that want to see Vista, like your mom or anyone who takes their computer to the Geek Squad for repairs.
  • Is for people that want that cool kids book, But you don't have to go on the truck to get that just get it at the table outside.