Friendly Reminder of new Blog Site

Just wanted to post a quick reminder to everyone that this blog is dead and I’ve moved my blogging package over to my new home page.  I’ve been blogging over there for a few months now and really like it so I hope you’ll adjust your RSS feeds for it!

I’ve noticed a few people trying to comment and some RSS feed views on this page, so thought it would be helpful to let everyone know.

Thanks!

Johnathon Scionwest.

Changing Blog Hosting locations

So after having this account for a couple of years on WordPress, I thought it was about time for me to go ahead and purchase my own Domain and hosting service and host my blog on a personal site.

From this post forward, all future posts made to my blogs, will be made at http://Scionwest.net. Please update your RSS feeds accordingly so you can still get my posts!

Thanks to those who followed me on WordPress, hope to see your comments and feedback at my blogs new location

Mud Designer V1.4 on the horizon

It’s been a little over 8 months since the last release of the Mud Designer, which flew by like lightning. Over the course of those 8 months, I’ve done some work off and on to the engine, with quiet a bit of work during the month of September, which sadly did not get pushed to a release like it probably should have.

Version 1.4 however is on its way, as I’ve just finished replacing a major component of the engine and bug tested it and feel it’s pretty solid. The engine’s scripting engine was replaced by another project of mine, the rScript Engine. The rScript Engine supports custom compilers being built, that will take scripts and compile them into .NET assemblies for access during runtime. I replaced the Mud Designer script engine with a custom compiler that implements the rScript Engine, and was able to finish it last night. The best part about it, none of the Mud Engine example scripts had to be re-wrote, as I made sure to write the new compiler in a manor that allowed the existing scripts to work with it.

All of the scripts were revised and the way that game commands were implemented received a revision in-between V1.3 and V1.4 as well. I’ll spend the next week or so ironing out some of the Tasks that I’ve had sitting on my Task list for the last 10 months, and then push the V1.4 out to the public.

Unity 3D Thoughts

I’ve spent the last few months working on a project using the Unity 3D engine and have to say that it’s a pretty solid engine. While on any given day, I’d much rather be using the UDK tool kit, I don’t mind using Unity when I need to.

The unity community is very supportive, and the company seems geared towards helping indie game developers out with making their own video games which is a plus. The engine does not have all of the features that UDK does, like a cut-scene editor and point-and-click scripting, but for developers that are used to C# and XNA, I find the Unity is a perfect tool to help keep development costs down. The transition is not that difficult to make.

One of the things I really like with Unity, is the ability to write code, and then run it immediately. I’m not aware of any way to do that with UDK, which I believe requires you to restart the editor each time you want to compile the scripts and have them take affect.

I’m really wanting to get my current project completed, but I’m suffering from lack of 3D math knowledge, which hinders my development speed. That and building some sort of state manager, which is taking some time.

I am going to spend tonight really focusing on fixing some of the issues I have with my project, and getting a working copy uploaded to the teams SVN tonight.

Catching up

It’s been a few months since I’ve made a blog post, so I thought I’d take some time to update everyone.

Work has been pretty hectic since November of last year. I’ve completed one project (we constructed a brand new highway) and moved onto a new project in February for some highway improvements. The current project is a two year project, accelerated to just 9 months, so there’s a lot of work to do. When I’m not crunching away on spreadsheets and paperwork at the office, I’m helping my wife out with her new 10 week old teacup chihuahua puppy.

I’ve finally been able to catch a break and get a weekend off, so tonight looks like a good night to work on a project. I’ve been working with FatCow Games on a game using the Unity game engine and have not been free to work on it over the last month or so.

I’ll be posting more n that later on, but for now I’ll just keep this post short. One last thing though, I bought an iPad 2! So I’m addicted to it, and use it for everything lol.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,100 times in 2010. That’s about 10 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 73 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 126 posts. There were 12 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 836kb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was December 14th with 59 views. The most popular post that day was Googles Android SDK Issues.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were muddesigner.codeplex.com, mudcreator.codeplex.com, scionwest.blogspot.com, google.com, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for your project contains errors android, android launch your project contains errors, and the installable unit org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.equinox.weaving.translated_host_properties is missing the filename property..

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Googles Android SDK Issues January 2010
7 comments

2

RTS Development using Unity3D October 2010

3

Android SDK resolution January 2010
2 comments

4

Project Collaboration Fellowstream August 2010
2 comments

5

About The Author January 2010
2 comments

rScript 1.2 released

It’s been less than a week and I’ve already released a 2nd update to the rScript Engine. Version 1.2 includes a couple nice features that required quiet a bit of re-coding in order to get them built in, but it went together smoothly and I think the changes make the engine a much better solution than it was in version 1.1.

So what changed? For starters, the ScriptRepository property was removed and the Compile() method gained three variations to itself. You can now compile a directory full of scripts, a single file or raw source code.

Here is an example of compiling a complete directory.

static void CompileScriptRepository()
        {
            //The directory that contains a collection of scripts.
            String scriptRepository = "Scripts";

            //Compile all scripts within that directory.
            Boolean isCompiled = _CompileEngine.Compile(scriptRepository);

            //Check for any compiler errors.
            if (!isCompiled)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(_CompileEngine.Errors);
            }
        }

And another example, this time showing how to compile a single file.

static void CompileScriptFile()
       {
           //The script file that we will compile
           System.IO.FileInfo file = new System.IO.FileInfo(@"Scripts\Wheel.cs");

           //Compile our source script file. Script engine will perform file existance checking prior to compiling.
           Boolean isCompiled = _CompileEngine.Compile(file);

           //Check for any compiler errors.
           if (!isCompiled)
           {
               Console.WriteLine(_CompileEngine.Errors);
           }
       }

Lastly, how to compile raw source code.

static void CompileSource()
        {
            //Construct an array of strings with raw source code.
            String[] sourceCode = new String[] {"namespace SampleSource {\n" +
                "public class SampleClass {" +
                "public int Size = 20; " +
                "public Double Width" +
                "{" +
                    "get" +
                    "{" +
                      "return 8.5;" +
                    "}" +
                "}" +
                "public void GetTireBrand() {" +
                    "System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(\"Super Tire Co.\");" +
                 "}" +
                 "}" +
                 "}"
            };

            //Compile the source code
            Boolean isCompiled = _CompileEngine.Compile(sourceCode);

            //Check for any compiler errors.
            if (!isCompiled)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(_CompileEngine.Errors);
            }
        }

What’s next? I’ve already started work on implementing a IronPython Compiler Wrapper. I’m sure developers would like being able to supply a Python script engine with their application wrote in C# or VB. I’m also working on getting a Windows Phone 7 version of the engine compiled. Be nice to write your Python scripts once, include the scripts in your PC app and then ship pre-compiled scripts with your WP7 app and still have access to dynamic method invoking and property accessing.

rScript Engine for .NET Goes live!

Last night I uploaded the initial release of the rScript Engine. With the 1.1 release, developers can quickly and easily add a script engine to their projects, supporting C# and Visual Basic scripts. Much like it’s older predesessors that I replaced, the script engine will dynamically compile scripts, Invoke Methods, Accessing Properties and Fields.

The rScript does something however that my older engine’s would not do, and that is offer support for adding any custom .NET based compiler into the engine to be used as a script compiler on the fly.

The engine is available for free with plans to add IronPython and IronRuby for scripting support.
Cross-platform support is planned as well, with Linux, Xbox 360 and Windows Phone support coming soon.
Note that Windows Phone and Xbox support will be for accessing compiled Types dynamically. Compiling of scripts is not supported by those devices, and thus won’t be available as part of the engine.

Silverlight Model-View-ViewModel learning

I’m still having a difficult time getting the MVVM approach that Microsoft uses with their Silverlight applications aimed at the Windows Phone 7 device. I’ve never really had to use something like this, were I need to separate my data by a middle man. Typically my UI components access the data it needs via a Type within a Class Library. Having to have a ‘View’ that reveals the data to the UI is taking some serious getting used to.

I was actually hoping to have my new Windows Phone 7 application completed this weekend, but after dealing with issues related to understanding how to structure things using a MVVM, the completion of the project has been pushed back.

I spent today migrating a lot of my code from classes into a ViewModel for my View to use. I approached things incorrectly, as I had all my code stored in classes, creating a structure like Model-View-ViewModel-Object, which really made things complicated when it came to data sharing amongst app objects.

After re-structuring everything, and moving my logic code into the ViewModel, things have really started to make better since for me. I don’t really want to demonstrate anything related to the app at this time, but I will definitely be showing it off here and on my Twitter feed when the time is right. Looking forward to it! It will mark my first professional app that I’ve ever released commercially. Can’t wait!

Mud Designer plans

Now that I’ve got a large chunk of my current Windows Phone 7 application wrote, I’m feeling pretty good with how things work regarding it. I’m slowly understanding Silverlight a little more with each day I work on this app and feel pretty confident with it.

I started thinking what would be a good next app and I think I want to go ahead and start work on the mobile telnet client app for the phone. While I work on that, I’ll resume work on the Mud Designer and try getting a world up and running by february.
I think a mobile MMORPG (even if it’s in the form of a MUD) would be a pretty cool achievement for myself. If I can beat other people to it, be nice to be the person to release the first Windows Phone 7 MMORPG.

The Mud Designer engine is pretty far along IMO. The core engine is finished and I just need to start working on the NPC, Combat and Quest systems. NPC and Combat shouldn’t take to long, and I’m pretty sure I can put together a simple to use Quest system to get the engine into a useable state. As time progresses and income comes in (hopefully) I can improve and build on the systems, adding more content and eventually get the GUI created and working.

Windows Phone 7 MMORPG anyone? It sounds good to me.