PhysBall
Posted by Mike | Filed under Projects
Well, being a video game programmer I am always desiring to make games. I actually made this particualar game a while ago for some reason that I forget. This is not a complete game, as it is simply a ball that shoots at spheres. This may sound dull, but you’d be suprised how much fun that it can be just to shoot at a bunch of falling cubes. This one was made with the Ogre3D rendering engine and the PhysX physics engine, and was actually inspired by a PhysX demo of shooting a ball at a stack of cubes. This game has many things that I can still add, but I thought that I would have the push to finish it if I posted a “beta” version. I welcome any constructive feedback on this game, and hope you enjoy wasting a few minutes.
Tags: game, video game
Automated Build Server
Posted by Mike | Filed under Computers, Programming, Servers
An automated build server. Whats this you ask? An automated build server is an extremely useful tool to use in development. This type of server is dedicated specifically to running building scripts when you want. Most automated build servers come with at least one SCM plugin, usually for the ever popular open source CVS and SVN. A third, more restrictively licensed, popular SCM is Perforce (mostly commercial, however is available for small teams for free). These servers can build on schedules, or watch a SCM server and build whenever there is a commit. This means that you could do many great things, submit them to your SCM server, and be informed when something breaks, meaning hindering the development of other team members because you forgot to submit the changes to one of your files.
There are several automated build servers out there, such as Apache Ant, and NAnt (there are more, but I’m just listing two to keep the list short). There are some others, and there are two of my favourites.
The first hails from a group called Zutubi and they have a product called Pulse. Bascially, it runs as a java binary on your system (and because it is java it supports many different operating systems) and has a great web interface. Top notch product that you can’t go wrong with. Has everything that you need.
The second one is from a company called Atlassian. This one is called Bamboo. Just as great as Pulse, but also has some additional features such as Build Metrics and integration with other Atlassian products. Has a really awesome web interface to the java binary running on your system.
The really great things about the two that I’ve mentioned is the fact that they are from companies trying to make money, but they are really good in the fact that they support open source software development. Meaning that if you’ve got an open source software project, you may be able to get some free dev tools. Zutubi also offers small licenses for free to projects without a large dev team. Either one of these companies is a sure win because they aren’t out there just trying to make a buck, they are out there trying to be part of the solution and the community.
Tags: auto build server, automated build server, c++, Programming
Programmer Productivity
Posted by Mike | Filed under Computers, Programming
As any season programmer could tell you, productivity is a huge problem. I cannot recall the number of hours that I have spent wasting time on things that I didn’t think that I needed to be doing, and now there is proof that I was right. From typing out the same long lines of code again and again, with the Intellisense Database always being the best for C++. I have discovered several products that have have helped me increase my productivity.
Visual Assist X
This piece of software is excellent for code sensing and completion. This has helped me save time in figuring out the exact syntax or name of a function that I named ever so long ago. It has a whole wealth of features and comes with the ever so helpful(or annoying for some) Tip of the Day. If you’ve ever use Visual Studio for any .NET development and seen the code sensing for the .NET library and liked it you won’t be sorry for picking up a license of Visual Assist X.
Xoreax IncrediBuild
For any programmer who has ever spent time watching your build progress counting the lines of code that could be written while your build finishes, I have some software for you. Xoreax has this incredible piece of software called IncrediBuild that will allow you to utilize multiple cores not just on your computer, but on other licensed networked computers connected to the Build Coordinator. Using the idea of distributed compiling, IncrediBuild drastically reduces the compile time even for the simpliest of projects. I had a small game that usually took ~2 minutes or more to compile, that would take at most 1 minute. Even for a small project like that, the compiling time reduction was amazing! And that was only on one computer with a quad core processor. Imagine utilizing 20 cores to build an extremly large project, your compile times will be greatly reduced with IncrediBuild.
VisualSVN
First off, if, as a programmer, you don’t know what source control is – look it up. Source control has saved my butt so many times because I erased some code 30 revisions ago that I don’t remember but I need right now, and who really wants to reinvent the wheel? VisualSVN is a cool little plugin for Visual Studio to use Subversion really easily right in the IDE. It does save time when trying to commit and make changes and stuff. You could use the Winodws Explorer and do it that way, but again that wastes time
Tags: productivity
Handy Software
Posted by Mike | Filed under Computers
There is tons of software available for your computer these days, and if you want to find some to speed up your computer, you’ve come to the right place. There is software for productivity, games, browsing the internet, and more. There is also a bunch of software for optimizing your computer and making it faster. The most common piece of software is probably the registry optimizer. I have two types of software that will help speed up your computer and possibly easy wear and tear.
Pre-Caching
There is a special feature that is now included with Windows Vista, called SuperFetch (also ReadyBoost is associated with this feature). Basically SuperFetch uses a USB Key or any other type of fast read device (quicker than a hard drive) to store commonly used programs so that they load faster. While many people are reluctant to switch to Windows Vista (as they should be) there is an alternative for people still using the solid Windows XP, and it is called eBoostr. This program intelligently monitors your program usage and stores what it believes to be the most commonly used programs in memory. This program actually is both a ReadyBoost and SuperFetch alternative available for XP.
There are many people who would choose to not pay for this software, and I have to say that for this particular piece of software you can go wrong purchasing it. The cost is ~$25 (depending on the version you choose) and you get pretty good support. This program (depending on your version) can store programs on a USB key or directly in your system’s RAM for lightning fast access. I had a problem installing this program and I emailed them and they were quite helpful. This program is great for getting programs to launch really quickly, and speed your computer up.
Great news is, that the program comes with support for both 32 and 64 bit Windows XP.
http://www.eboostr.com
RAM Disk
Although slightly related, this type of software is a little related to pre-caching. This type of software creates a virtual hard drive in your computer’s RAM. This can be incredibly useful for programs that are constantly accessing information from your system’s hard drive and can be a good place to store temporary internet files. If you download a lot of little files that you don’t keep or browse the internet a lot, having a RAMdisk can be quite helpful. The next good thing is, you can get it for free. Doing a simple google search brought up the following website:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/
They have great info about what a RAMdisk is and a download link for you to get the files you need and set everything up. The bad news is that this particular website doesn’t have the x64 version, but never fear there is a version.
http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?showtopic=12230
You’ll have to sign up, but they provide all the info that you need.
Finally, for those of you who want an even better solution, there is the commercial option. There is a program called RamDisk Plus that will allow you to do everything and then some. The program also allows you to keep everything from your RamDisk so that it doesn’t get deleted when you restart your computer. They also have a 32 and 64 bit version for you to use.
http://www.superspeed.com/ramdisk.php
So I hope that this helps, and good luck to you all with speeding up your computers
Tags: optimization
First post
Posted by Mike | Filed under Random
I haven’t really had a chance to update a whole lotta things, but I thought one of the first things that I’d do is get rid of the god awful “Hello World.” Hopefully I’m not the only programmer out there who has a great distaste for seeing “Hello World” on the front page of this site.
RSS Feed