Wow, all of a sudden everyones got the mushroom bug, and is heading up to camp on August 15 2005. I will be taking my laptop with me this year, so I can continue to work on my projects while i'm away. I have been taking the time these last few days to redesign my camp for this year.

In the mean time if you are wondering what I will be up to while I'm gone you can always checkout the pictures I took of last years (2004) mushroom season.

Bad Ping
*Sigh* It sucks living so far north. I was trying to play Counter-Strike: Source and kept dying because of bad ping. While I was getting 200-300 ping everyone else was getting 40-60. Kinda hard to be competitive when your enimies can shoot you even before you know there in from of you. It got me thinking about how to implement client/server messaging code. Then I got to thinking why not try and conceptualize a online multiplayer game that utilizes P2P to send messages between gamers. Network code is the one aspect of game creation that I have very limited experience with simply because I have not had the computers to test it with. But now that I have 3, and I am going to start playing around with both P2P and Client/Server code.

MediaWiki
As I have mentioned in an earlier post I have installed MediaWiki on this web site, but I am currently debating weather or not to keep it and use it as my primary means of web publishing. Or dump it in favor of my own custom built asp.net web site. I like MediaWiki, it was easy to install and setup but I am the kind of person who has the misfortune to think too far into the future. What I am really searching for is a way to publish my web site containing my blog, programming projects, host files for download, and have video tutorial sections etc. And do it in a way that will stand the test of time. I want the ability to keep adding content to the createdbyx.com web site 30 years from now and still have the files and documents I have hosted on the site today. So that people can visit the site and actually go back in time and check out what I was up to. Essentially I want the this site to be a record of my life, my work, my goings on and my day to day etc.

The problem is that I can't seem to agree on a long term solution that I can be sure will be around 30 years from now. HTML is great and has stood the test of time but I have a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it's days are numbered. At least in it's current form. Which means that all the stuff I have coded in HTML on this site right now might have to be converted to work on some future technology. The same would hold true with MediaWiki if I decide to use it. If MediaWiki falls out of favor some time in the future or even the PHP technology that runs it, gets replaced by some other newer better/cooler technology then it would also make MediaWiki obsolete 30 years from now. Then of cource there is all the DNN (DotNetNuke) based content I have on this site that will need to be converted. Sigh. Anybody that has moved or upgraded there web site a couple of times over the years can relate to having to dump all the old web sites content and start from scratch or some of that old content is enevitably tossed out in the moving process. I myself still have web site content from 3 ago stored on my hard drive that has not seen the light of day for over 6 years.

And because I am a programmer, gamer/modder, and freeware advocate, I always feel I have a need to share my findings and knoledge with the rest of the world. So what ever system I decide upon will need to allow me to publish it in an easy simple manner.

I have been giving some thought to this for a very long time now and I have to admit for all my efforts I just do not have the time to make this site all that it could be. I am increasingly facing the fact that I will have to pay someone to rewrite this site and port over all my work, blog posts, and HTML files from my old web sites etc.

Zider Game engine
I have finally been doing some more coding on zider as of late. It seems like it's been forever since I have done any coding whatsoever. I also decided to remove the console and command manager systems from my DXTools library and put it into it's own separate library called xGameConsole. I am going to be doing some simple testing/visualization apps for Zider as well to get an idea of what the game will look like. I am thinking I might also separate the animation system from the DXTools library because it can be used for more then just standard track animation.

More videos to come (eventually)
I would like to create more tutorial videos but I am holding off until my code has become more stable, consistant, and not so much in a state of change all the time. I will have all next week to myself so there will not be as many distractions, so I am going to try and publish at least a few videos. At least thats the plan. Not sure what I am going to make the videos about yet though. But I'm sure one of them will be a walk through on how to fill in a 2D triangle manually.

Not enough code!
Whoa! I was just looking back through my blog posts to see when was the last time I posted any code on my site. It's been like 3-4 months since I posted any code. All these blog posts and nothing to show for it. :( I think it is because of alot of reasons and one of them is that some of the projects I am working on are rather large ones and are quite involving. I am going to try to make an effort to provide more frequent code examples in the future.

But any way that's generally what I've been up to this week ...

I have not been posting any update as of late. I have not been doing much of anything really, mostly slacking off.

First it started last week when I hiked from my house up the thornhill mountian trail to the first lake on top of the mountian. It took five hours of walking to reach the summit overlooking the lake, and another three and a half hours to walk back home. Needless to say my legs were a little sore for the next few days after that.

The the the other day I purchased Half-Life 2 using steam. It was an simple experience, and I have to say using steam to purchase games online is a mixed blessing. For one the purchasing of a game using steam may be easy but having to wait for 2 days before you can play the friggin game is BS. And Yes I have broadband! The download for HL2 is over 3 gigabytes! And that does not include downloading Counter-Strike Source, HL2 Death match, or the Source SDK!

Then there are the "Time" concerns. Time as in will I still be able to play HL2 15 years from now? Or will valve simply decide to stop supporting it. Additionally, what happends if Valve the company goes belly up, what happends to all us gamers then! Will we still be able to play HL2?

I considered taking the $60 CAD I spent on HL2 and getting World of Warcraft but I dispise blizzard for taking the monthly subscription aproach. it's cheap, meaningless, and BS. And is just another way to suck more money out of the consumer for the same game.

I have also been planning a new game engine called Zider. The name Zider is a mix of words and meanings. It combines Side scrolling game "Side", but rendering the scene in 3D "Z depth". Hence the name Zider. It will be my 10 to the 24th power attempt at starting and finishing a usable game engine. But this time I'm taking it slow. Really slow. Now that I have a better understanding of game engine design and in game consoles, as well as my DXTools graphics library I almost have all the tools and pieces I will need to make the Zider game engine a reality. Zider is actually a old idea I have had for a while now but have yet to get around to coding it. Just one of those things I guess.

Oh yah, can't for get about this. Guess who can juggle? You got it! Yours trully! ha HA! Awesome. The other day for no reason at all >cough< Wating for HL2 to download >cough< I picked up 3 tennis balls that were lying around and started learning how to juggle them. I can't believe it only took between 6 and 8 hours before I was juggling 3 balls! I have already started to get real fancy and doing tricks like in the middle of juggling I throw up one ball then as it's comming down throw the other two balls up at the same time, catching the first ball and continuing to juggle. I can also juggle 2 balls in one hand!

It was actually a fluke that I started to juggle, I was out in the back yard and after hours of not being able to grasp the concept of juggling just out of the blue I got lucky and managed to juggle 3 balls about 5 times before fouling it up. But that's all it took to open my eyes and wrapping my mind around how to juggle. From then on I've been juggling up a storm.

Strangley enough now that I am comfortable juggling, my mind can be off wondering on something else while I'm juggling. many times I feel as though I am juggling unconsiously and I'm not in control. It's a strange sensation being able to keep track of three balls both catching them and throwing them at the same time, and doing it in rapid succesion.

If the Video does not play below then just click this link to download the file.

I have been playing around with Media Wiki, and I have to say it was quite easy to install andget up and running. I tried using Flex Wiki but had too hard of a time getting it working properly after installing it.

As opposed to an average non-programming windows user I tend to reinstall windows at least once or twice a year. Especially with all the crap I download, you can never be sure if some of the stuff truly uninstalls itself completely. But anyway I was reinstalling XP Pro an hour ago and for the first time it actually did something different.

Oddly enough though I tried to click the "Microsoft Activation Assistance Web Site" link but my internet was too slow and caused a timeout that crashed the Microsoft server, causing it to return an asp.net application error page telling me the request timed out. Not very graceful error handling by the microsoft web devs.

So instead of trying again to activate windows I simply clicked cancel and proceeded to install SP2 as well as download additional windows updates. And when I went to activate it again just a moment ago, poof, no more nag screen. Something about SP2 or one of the other windows updates must have nullified the windows activation mechanism, because windows is now activated and ready to go.

This post is for those of you who in the off chance read this post and reinstall windows and it tells you have exceeded your install/activation limit, to simply try and install SP2 and all windows updates before trying to activate. The activations exceeded nag screen just might disappear like mine did!

Go check out google earth it's free!

Since Google acquired Keyhole satellite imaging company they have been doing awesome things with it. First it was google maps and now this! Sweet. Now I can totally plan out a hiking trip or plot a kayaking trip down the river and not have to "guess" how long a trip will take or what provisions I will need.

In case you havent heard GameDev.net is holding a programming contest over at GameDev.net - Contests - Four Elements IV

I have been aware that the forums have not been working and was not sure why it suddenly stopped working. Then I woke up this morning and realized, I changed my password at my brinkster web hosting account. lol Duh! The password that phpbb was trying to use to connect to the database was the old password. Any way all is right again and no fourm data was lost. If this ever happends again and you are trying to visit the fourms just send me an email at createdbyx@createdbyx.com and let me know that the fourms are down. I am able to respond more quicker this way.

Visit the Created by: X - Fourms powered by phpBB

On June 13 I made a blog entry titled "Hint: noslO nosaJ "Nutty Soup"

This post if any of you might have figured out, refers to Jason Olson's blog regarding 2D game game development using managed DX.

Well instead of leaving you hanging and scratching you heads. I'll just tell you. I have taken the C# code from the Console and Command classes and converted them to VB.NET. I have also added some functionality, as well as stripped some out.

The console code Jason has on his blog was too tightly coupled with the game that he was making so in order to simplify and make the console code more easily portable and reusable I removed the rendering code so that the console now calls a delegate that the programmer specifies rather then the console rendering itself.

But anyway, I will be posting the code as well as a example of the console code in action, fairly soon. I am planning on making a video demo that will take you thru understanding how the console works and what changes I made to it etc. As well as demonstrate the power that having a console in your game can be.

A winning game has been chosen at the 2005 VB Game programming contest. TAttack took the top spot and won a copy of VB.NET 2003 standard!

I would just like to say thanks to all who participated, and I hope to hold another contest some time in the future...