WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN!

So I managed to get an old computer up and running, then managed to stuff it up so I'm trying to recover it now. The amount of RAM in it isn't great, but it has a better graphics card than anything else I have available at the moment.

Anyway, while I was trying to salvage it I double-checked the sytem requirements for XNA 4.0 and the new 7.1 beta requires 3GB of RAM while the current 7.0 release requires 2GB RAM! This is more RAM than any of my old systems have, so I'm pretty gutted so I'll have to save my pennies for a RAM upgrade. :(

However, I did find that there is an XNA 4 ONLY download for Windows XP (so just XNA Game Studio, not the whole Windows Phone suite that XNA now comes bundled with) so I may give that a try once I've recovered my old system.

The laptop I'm using is running Windows 7 with only 1GB RAM so I can't use the above tools, however, I can use DirectX with Visual C++ Studio Express 2010 SP1 to do some development with. It's been a while since I programmed with DX (v8 was the last one I programmed for) so I'm going to go through my old C++/DX game programming books and lecture notes to refresh my memory, then go through the DX11 tutorials to update my knowledge. It'll take a but of time, but it'll be a lot of fun as I loved creating games with C++. I'm probably going to document what I learn for my own reference so I'll see if I can post them up here. I'm also planning on creating my own template for Visual Studio so I don't get too tired of typing the same code over and over (then probably doing a massive face palm for not setting up the appropriate reference files.....).

So, I do feel like there is some progress being made and some is much better than none! :)

Technology fail!

So development (or any plans thereof) came to a screetching halt as the graphics card in my laptop died, leaving me with nothing to develop on. Yes, I came foul of the NVidia issue that effected the 8600M series (plus some others) cards. If you haven't heard of this, NVidia developed a series of chips where the pins (that connect the chip to the motherboard) come loose over time due to heat. This causes the display to either go strange, or just to go blank. I found one temporary fix on YouTube where you could blast a hairdryer directly on to the chip (I'm guessing this excessive heat must cause some kind of re-soldering to occur) for 2 minutes, this did not work for me (though I did find a tonne of fluff blocking the air from getting circulated properly, which is probably the cause of the laptop over-heating I was getting).

Anyway, that's it for now (literally) so I'll post an update when I get a new laptop.

AI Talk for the Calgary Chapter of the Game Developers Group

So I've been talking to the group's creater on and off about doing a session on AI and we've finally decided upon a date. I'm going to be doing the presentation in November. That's quite a way off but I have some personal things I need to finish off and want to give the presentation my full focus so that attendees get the most out of it. So far I'm looking at covering topics such as A* Pathfinding, Flocking and Emergent Behaviour. The time slot is 2 hours but I may make the presentation an hour and a half to leave times for questions, etc. I'll update this blog with progress.

Canadian Video Game Awards Winners!

So it looks like Mass Effect 2 picked up the majority of awards at the Canadian Video Game Awards this year! Congratulations to BioWare

Microsoft Partner!

Just a quick note to say that we are now a Microsoft Partner! Yay!

Quick view

So I was complimenting the UDK for ease of use in my last post, well this is what I managed to do in a couple of hours (that was spread out over 2 or 3 days):


The UDK is well worth checking out.

Martin

Bit of an Update .... but not much!

Hi there,

so things have been pretty crazy around here. As I've said before, this is all done in spare time and, unfortunately, spare time is something that has disappeared as of late (though an addiction to Assassin's Creed 2 has not helped). Anyway, I have left XNA on the back burner as I have been looking at version 3 of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). I must say, it is a pretty slick tool. The interfaces have changed A LOT since I last looked at the engine and the asset browser is a bit confusing at first, but you soon get used to it. There are a lot of resources on the UDK site (such as video tutorials) and they are all free. The engine is also free as long as you are not developing for commercial use.

Anyway, so why did I start looking at UDK? I have been asked to prepare a little something about AI for a presentation at the Calgary XNA Users Group. The presentation is based on a thesis I did a while ago on giving NPCs the ability to determine their own use of cover in environments. The original demo of this was completed in C++ in a custom 2D engine that used DirectX8. Anyway, the art work was garbage as I did it myself so I was hoping to do something that really shows off the potential for the technology as well as looks good and was in C++ (though the UDK runs Unreal Script, but at least it is OO) as it would be quicker than developing a 3D engine in XNA. So the prototype is starting to get somewhere as far as the level design goes, so I'm going to start some coding on it tomorrow. Hopefully I can put some screen shots up here soon so you can see it. I may even put up a copy of the presentation.

That's all for now, so take it easy.

Martin