Houston vs. Chicago

Well, at least I saw a game tonight which had the roof closed.

Seriously, what does Bud Selig want? Perhaps we should dunk all the balls in water and give up a bad umpire call in the 7th each game to make the Sox feel more at home? Not that they seem to need it at the moment.

Game Development Status 10/25/05

Monthly total 6 hours; yearly total 224.5 hours.

I worked on the Jump Map dialog again tonight. I only have one fix remaining: there is a scaling problem storing a "jump point" coordinate when the main window is scrolled. It causes the Jump Map reticle to appear over the wrong part of the Jump Map.

Still moving forward.

Game Development Status 10/24/05

Monthly total 4.5 hours; yearly total 223 hours.

I worked on the Jump Map this evening. I imported a new map for the dialog that is much sharper than the original and properly conforms to the proportions of the main map. I updated the reticle code so the red "reticle" area on the jump map conforms to the actual visible area on the PC's display, regardless of resizing of the window. I am now working on some problems with updating the state of the reticle based on scrolling the map outside the jump map dialog.

I'm generally feeling positive about things again. Being able to string together several sessions in the past week has helped.

More Good Reads

I also use SharpReader to aggregate a bunch of RSS feeds. One of them served up this alternative to the SEI CMM (or CMMI or SEMA or whatever they call it these days). It's a good read.

Good Reading

I subscribe to a number of e-mail newletters. I especially like .Net Insight and MSDN Flash, but others are useful as well.

I was reading a newsletter from Red Gate Software this morning and came across an article debating the merits of using stored procedures. I have to say, I come down on the "always" use sprocs side of the argument. The maintenance angle has historically been key for me: the ability to quickly make a change or a fix has been very useful where I work. Much A significant amount of my time goes towards supporting and enhancing an ASP/VB6/ActiveReports app, where I have several server-side DLL's serving up ActiveReports driven by sprocs. I audit each report usage, in many cases including the parameters used by the report calls. This permits me to quickly reproduce, diagnose, and fix most problems by working with the stored procedures alone. All new apps at the office are being developed using ASP.Net using CodeSmith to generate the business objects, CRUD sprocs, and data access layer code. It's gotta be sprocs!

The same site also had a good article on longevity in my profession. It's one of the few I've seen with an upbeat take on things.

Game Developement Status 10/17/05

Monthly total 2.5 hours, yearly total 220 hours.

Tonight I added an option to have a hotseat or PBEM game without passwords. Robert Fulton had suggested this feature.

I'm building momentum again.

Game Development Status 10/15/05

I am working on the game again after a little hiatus due to minor things like work, recovering from a sinus infection, making wedding plans, and dodging hurricanes. I converted my notes on Robert Fulton's test observations into tasks:

bug 051015-1: (rfulton 050827)
high assaulting units failing their roll to close do not move adjacent and exchange Feu

enh 051015+1: (rfulton 050827)
high allow an option to have a hotseat game without passwords

enh 051015+2: (rfulton 050827)
mid as soon as a unit is plotted one hex out of it's starting hex, show the next unit in the stack

confirm with Chris

enh 051015+3: (rfulton 050827)
mid-high permanent status dialog

a dockable modeless dialog that shows what we currently display in the status bar

enh 051015+4: (rfulton 050827)
mid stack dialog

a dockable modeless dialog that shows the contents of the current stack and allows rearrangement of the units within a stack

perhaps also some status info (plotted or not, MU or not)?
vertical or horizontal layout? (I like vertical)


My current TODO list reads like:

1. enh 051015+1: (Robert Fulton 050827)
allow an option to have a hotseat game without passwords

2. bug 051015-1: (Robert Fulton 050827)
assaulting units failing their roll to close do not move adjacent and exchange Feu

3. bug 050702-5: (Richard Kane 050702)
jump map dlg footprint overlay graphic does not maintain state wrt scrolling in the app when jump is not shown

4. bug 050702-6: (Richard Kane 050702)
jump map dlg footprint overlay graphic cannot move to right and bottom of jump map

5. bug 050702-7: (Richard Kane 050702)
diagnose and fix code ASSERT in Point to Point LOS

to reproduce: a) select unit, b) turn pt-pt los on c) scroll vert

Google as the Way-Back Machine

I googled myself today just for the heck of it, and found an old reference to my Master's project on the TUG site (search within the document for "Integration of RCS"). Mentioned in dispatches...thanks, Prof. Childs.

I wonder whether the work was ever finished? I'll have to drop him a line.