Game Development Status 11/4/09

I've been thinking about priorities lately. There are several things I want to work on for the game and limited time in which to do the work. By my own plan I am supposed to be prototyping the UI, the game system, and parts of the AI, pretty much in that order. I have spent time lately on supporting infrastructure tasks such as familiarization with MVVM and AvalonDock. While I ought to be willing to throw the prototype away and start over fresh when I get the final approval to proceed, I hate to waste the work. The questions I have are whether I should just throw some code together for the prototype or whether I should complete my familiarization with MVVM and AvalonDock so I can proceed using TDD and use the prototype as the basis for the final game.

I may not even have approval to write a game for PIC-Guam. I don't have an agreement yet with Chris.

One thing I did decide recently is that I will write this game regardless of whether I have Chris' appproval to do so. I believe I can do so as a hobby project even if I don't have a contract. I want to write a game. PIC-Guam should translate extremely well to the PC, and its much of its AI and UI will be applicable to many different game systems. Even if I cannot sell a PC PIC-Guam game, I should be able to rework the exec, AI, and UI to support other games in the future.

I think the most important thing to do is write the damn thing.

Which part should I write first? Tricky...

Game Status Update 10/17/09

OK, here's the deal. PC Eylau is not dead, but it is on the shelf. As Miracle Max said in The Princess Bride, it's only mostly dead. Though there has been a shakeup at Clash of Arms that could lead to publishing the game without an AI, I think the game needs to be re-implemented as a C#/WPF game in order to produce a stable product. Taking into account the time estimate for that work and a guess as to the size of the market for that game, and comparing that with the cost/benefits for PC PIC-Guam, there''s more money to be made for less effort for PC PIC-Guam.

So PC PIC-Guam is a go. I am moving forward with the PC PIC-Guam prototype by replacing the WPF Docking Library with AvalonDock (4-8 hours). After that I will move the prototype to the Visual Studio 2010 beta in order to get support for unit testing (1-2 hours). Then I will implement a couple of views and enough UI controls to drive basic game play; at the same time I will begin work on the game system code with the goal of prototyping basic combat for the head-to-head play mode (SWAG 20-32 hours). This totals up to 25-42 hours, or 6-11 weeks at 4 hours per week. Adding 6 more weeks to account for the birth of our baby, Christmas vacation, final review for the 70-502 WPF cert test, and family visits, I estimate I will complete this work around February 14th.

Once I complete the prototype, I will update my project plan and get with Chris about releasing the prototype to the test group as a preview.

LSC Career Fair-Tech Day

At the NHDNUG meeting on July 16th, Tonya Britton gave a brief presentation on the LSC Career Fair-Tech Day. This event will take place on the 24th of September. It combines a career fair (bring your resumes) featuring local employers with presentations on technology issues.

For more information about the conference at LSC-Montgomery, contact Tonya Britton, program manager, at 936.273.7354.

You can also find more information by checking out the Wiki, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the LSC site.

[I recently found this post languishing in my TODO list. I thought I had published it some time ago. My bad.]

D2SIG Meeting Notes

I attended the D2SIG meeting last night at the Microsoft offices in Houston. Claudio Lassala from EPS gave a good talk on Data Binding in WPF. He came prepared with a number of good examples of different techniques that explained not only the current thinking on data binding, but also some of the earlier techniques that fell short. Claudio knows his stuff, and dived down into the code frequently to make his points.

He covered DependencyObject, INotifyPropertyChanged, ObjectDataProvider, basic data binding with static resources, Data Templates, relative source binding, Value Converters, and many many more. It slices, it dices, it chops, it juliennes fries.

Along the way there was some good give and take with the audience. There were several people speaking up who were either working with data binding or about to. Side topics included mention of MVVM, Prism (Glenn Block), WPF Toolkit, and MVC.

I'm going to have to start attending D2SIG on a regular basis. I decided a few weeks back to focus on WPF and MVVM as "force multipliers" for PC PIC-Guam. I need to get a lot of result for as little effort as possible in order to stick to my 1000 hour time budget. I also need to get a lot of quality out of my UI design work (such as it is). This D2SIG will help with both.

WPF resources I've read lately (and will understand better in the future) include

• MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-502): Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 Windows Presentation Foundation

• Data and WPF: Customize Data Display with Data Binding and WPF

• Data Points: Data Binding in WPF

• Advanced WPF: Understanding Routed Events and Commands in WPF

• Patterns: WPF Apps With The Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern

• WPF Docking Library
  

I took notes during the presentation. For a 2 hour meeting, I came up with an estimate of five and a half hours of follow up tasks!

First Life and Blogging Frequency

Someone invited me to join Second Life a while back. I responded, "I'm still busy with First Life."

I don't post as often I would like, but that's because I'm still busy with First Life.

PC PIC-Guam Status 7/5/09

I've written the high level design for over 80 percent of the decisions to be made by the AI, so I've switched over to working on the UI prototype for a while.

Today I got the code working for the cursor position on the map, and I adapted the PC Eylau code for mapping the cursor position to the map hex. I also figured out how to fix some problems I'd had with that code in PC Eylau.

Other UI techniques I will prototype include

• use PIC-Guam map on screen
• show a unit graphic on a hex
• show a stack graphic on a hex
• click through a stack
• click to select a hex
• apply overlays to a hex: current hex highlight and colored overlay
• shade a hex
• make a hex transparent; restore the normal appearance of a hex
• context menu
• menu
• docking toolbars
• docking windows
• splash screen;video clips
• help | about dialog
• scrolling credits
• play a music file
• store all graphics in a separate resource assembly (not sure of term)
• MVVM
• stack view; allows cycling through units easily
• drag and drop
• display part of the map (a megahex) in another view
• display part of the map (a megahex) in a dialog
• animated buttons
• progress indicator
• animated/smooth movement of hexes from hex to hex during movement
• playback of movement (replay)

"If I Had Another Hammer..."

Eric Dornenburg wrote a good article on counter-arguments against using technology (an ESB in this case) just because it's cool.

If all you have is an RDD or MMD (Management Mandated Development) hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Administaff Observatory Open House 6/27/09

The Administaff Observatory had an open house last night. It was one of three scheduled open houses for employees of Administaff (a major donor for the observatory). It was also my "check-ride" as observatory manager; I'd had the training but this was my first opportunity to apply it.

Things went well, I think. There were a few hiccups with procedure. I used the laminated procedure charts and there were some steps that were out of sequence; other minor steps were missing. Wasps had made a nest near one of the external light switch lock boxes. For all that, it was a pretty smooth evolution.

By the guest book, we had 28 people show up: Administaff employees and their spouses and families. Aaron did most of the talking and object selection; he's very knowledgeable and knows the equipment inside and out. For my part, I drove the 20" Planetwave CDK instrument, fetched some visual aids, spoke one-on-one to a number of visitors, and smiled a lot.

I'm used to using "deck" scopes (personal telescopes setup outside an observatory on the "deck"). Mine are alt-az manual telescopes (no motors or computer-controlled drives). I have a lot to learn about TheSky software and about manually (well, joystick) laying an equatorial mounted telescope using right ascension (RA) and declination (DEC) controls; the 20" and 16" pier-mounted scopes in the observatory are driven that way.

I also need to review all the "cheat sheet" information, and I need to resume doing casual observations so I can become more familiar with the night sky. I've been very irregular lately, and I realized last night I had forgotten some of my constellations and objects. This review will help me select interesting objects to point the scopes at, and will improve my repertoire of things to talk about.

It was a blast, though. The attendees looked at the Moon, Saturn M3, M13, M57, M51 (very faint), Albireo, M6, and M7. Seeing was not particularly good. There was no cloud cover, but the high humidity and lack of rain lately meant there was a lot of polution and water vapor in the air. Light from the 35%-ish Moon and the Houston "nebula" tended to wash out a lot of detail, and the early evening viewing time also did not help. That said, everyone was delighted, and there were plenty of oohs and ahhs.

PIC-Guam Progress 6/26/09

I'm continuing to test out the rules for PIC-Guam. Chris showed me a recent draft of the map and updated rules. I've been doing map exercises on the landing beaches. I've also been writing up design notes on an AI for a computer version of PIC-Guam. This has helped to generate rules questions on the board game.

I've been trying to min-max the Japanese side towards victory (for various definitions of victory). Chris has already had to change the setup rules for the "Recapture of Guam" main scenario, restricting the number of fortfication counters on beach hexes and reducing the number of free setup units. Chris wrote a good set of rules for PIC-Guam, but I'm really trying to explore the boundaries from the point of view of a programmer. My most recent questions include (in no particular order).

• Can an Engineer company build forts on the same turn it reshuffles from 3 platoons?

• Can a suppressed friendly unit be used to take a casualty resulting fromm a friendly assault?

• Can a unit build up/break down in a ZOC? Does this provoke defensive first fire?

• Does a retreating unit with no place to move take step losses instead/?

• Can a retreat path look like a "J", or an "L"? Must the retreat path be in a straight line, or be directly away from the FEBA?

• Does Banzai charge exploitation stop at ZOC's?

• Can 3 Engineer platoons build a fort, or must they reorg into a company first?

• Can arty, air, and naval units make attacks on their own? How? What limits? Just wonder if there is anything aside from interdiction.

• Is it permitted to allow the US player to allocate all his naval support in one combat? If not, what limits are there?

• Does the Japanese player get defensive first fire against units moving into adjacent lagoon hexes? (i.e. during Amphibious phase)

• Does a US unit suffer any adverse effects from retreating into a lagoon hex from a land hex? Is this even permitted?

• Can a US unit withdraw from a lagoon hex to a sea hex?

• If the stacking limits are exceeded on the beach, in the lagoon, or in the sea hex for a landing zone, do follow on waves stack up and ultimately (possibly) delay later waves?

• Can the US player voluntarily hold back some or all units in a wave to a later turn?

• Do the Division and PMB HQs trace supply back to IIIMAC HQ? Do they trace supply back to the beach before IIIMAC HQ lands? If so, can it be any beach? (I'm guessing that it has to be through friendly controlled hexes, which argues against a unit cut off from the southern beach being able to trace supply to the northern beach before link-up.) If a regimental HQ from one beach fights its way through to the other beach, can it get supply there?

• Can Engineer units be replaced? Can other units also be replaced? (I guess all non-armor units can be replaced, using the replacement pool...just making sure.)

• 3.6 How many units, of what size, can be replaced for one point? (I guess one company, but I'm not sure.)

• 2.12.1.1 Typo: replace the word "beach" with "LD/Sea". Refers to placement of the next landing wave on the map.

• In the optional reinforcements rules, does the reference to 9th Tank Regiment refer to the HQ unit?

• Can naval units support amphibious fire and assault? (I'm guessing per 11.3 that CL/DD ships can.))

• 11.9 Does shore battery fire apply only to units on the beaches, or can shore batteries target lagoon and LD/sea hexes, too?

• Do the artillery/HQ rules apply to Japanese units? If so, what about the short range artillery units integral to battalions?

• Does Supply count after exploitation? If I exploit out of supply range, do I suffer the effects of out of supply?

Administaff Observatory - NHAC Open House

Dawn and I went to the Administaff Observatory for the NHAC open house night. Members were treated to the full tour of the facility.

The observatory is located on the campus of Jack Fields Elementary School. It's a roll off roof design.

The telescopes (pictured, left to right) include a 16" Meade Lightbridge dob reflector, a 20" Planetwave instrument, a Meade 16" SCT (I think), and a Coronado Solarmax 90. The Planetwave and SCT are computer controlled by a couple of Dell desktops.

There is also a whiteboard, a projector, red lights inside and out, a ramp providing wheelchair access, an equipment storage room, and (thankfully) a restroom.

Another view of the pier-mounted instruments. Planetwave, Meade SCT, and Dawn in the background.

Aaron Clevenson, right, in the bandana, holding forth on subjects astronomical. Other NHAC members are in the background. Note the wall in the background. The Administaff Observatory received significant funding from donations. The oval plaques represent large donors; some of the major stars are also named for donors.