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 ...