November 14, 2007
Today I find myself in Liverpool for the GDTW conference. I won't say too much here as I'll be posting a full(ish) report on it at the end of the conference. The welcome speeches haven't even started yet, and already I'm not entirely enthused by the proceedings, but we'll see - it should pick up. M…
November 09, 2007
I actually went to a lecture today (gasp!) and learnt about Bayes' law, and bayesian networks. You know, as in, spam filtering? The idea's actually pretty simple. Here's how I understand it...
Within a context of an "atomic event" - the word event is a little misleading, it doesn't have to be like a…
Within a context of an "atomic event" - the word event is a little misleading, it doesn't have to be like a…
November 09, 2007
Some people have been seeing intermittent failures on things to do with images - specifically the IOTD and the newly rewritten avatar uploading component.
I've been looking into the problem - it's a very funky one - and with the help of Josh Einstein, a Microsoft MVP and generally helpful guy, we've…
I've been looking into the problem - it's a very funky one - and with the help of Josh Einstein, a Microsoft MVP and generally helpful guy, we've…
November 07, 2007
OK, so one of the things we want to do in V5 is finally supply more powerful text editing tools for people in the form of javascript-powered AJAXy stuff. Things like click-to-add smileys are but the very beginning; I'm looking at full "WYSIWYG" rendering solutions that mean you'll never hav…
October 22, 2007
Tonight I successfully implemented a system which involves passing data from ASP->COM->.NET->SOAP->JIRA.
I feel quite accomplished.
I feel quite accomplished.
October 12, 2007
I went in and turned on XSL caching for the site today. From the looks of it, someone had originally implemented it, but not gotten it working to their satisfaction so commented it out again. I've rewritten it, turned it on, and nothing appears to have broken. Things even seem a little bit faster.
M…
M…
October 05, 2007
Anyone else playing FF3 on the DS interest in swapping Mognet codes?
Apparently there are certain side quests that only become available once you've exchanged messages with someone over Mognet.
My code is 5369 8217 3759...
Apparently there are certain side quests that only become available once you've exchanged messages with someone over Mognet.
My code is 5369 8217 3759...
September 30, 2007
I've been a bit busy the past couple of days as the girlfriend and I hit the 1 year mark yesterday. Or so we claim - the point at which people consider us to have actually started "going out" is a bit murky. We're measuring it from the point at which, in retrospect, the ball started rolling (so to …
September 27, 2007
My morning was spent setting up PKI on one of the GDNet webservers so that we can provide some things over SSL. Like this one. (No you can't have an account, it's mine, all mine!)
Most of my afternoon was spent watching BSG season 3 and reading 4E6 reactions.
Most of my afternoon was spent watching BSG season 3 and reading 4E6 reactions.
September 24, 2007
I've replaced the image component we use for generating thumbnails etc (Shotgraph) with a quick custom-written one. This should fix the issues people have been seeing with "palette too large" etc.
I'll be porting the GDS and avatar-upload code over as well in the near future, at which point we can r…
I'll be porting the GDS and avatar-upload code over as well in the near future, at which point we can r…
September 23, 2007
I left my job at NaturalMotion on Friday. I've got a week free - a week that will be dedicated mostly to working on the site, though I'd also like to catch up on things I've missed like BSG season 3 - and then it's back to Oxford for the third year of the CS course.
Judging on the ShadeYourWorld con…
Judging on the ShadeYourWorld con…
September 16, 2007
OK, so, unsurprisingly, people want to know more about GA. I'm not terribly comfortable talking about it because I would consider my grasp on the subject to be at most tenuous, but I'll do my best. Be aware that this may contain many terrible inaccuracies or misunderstandings.
GA is a Clifford algeb…
GA is a Clifford algeb…
September 12, 2007
Well, that took significantly longer than I'd hoped, but we've finally moved servers. Ironically, the thing that I thought would take longest - copying the data - was the shortest and simplest part of the operation; getting the machine working in VMWare was, by comparison, a fucking nightmare. Don …
September 11, 2007
Some of you will have seen the scheduled downtime we had today. Everything has gone fine, but I figured I'd explain exactly what I did.
We run the site on a virtual machine, which - since around March - has been hosted on one of our general-purpose servers, the same one we use for internal developme…
We run the site on a virtual machine, which - since around March - has been hosted on one of our general-purpose servers, the same one we use for internal developme…
September 04, 2007
For my birthday, I decided to buy myself a shiny black DS Lite, along with New Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy III. Mario's had some good playtime but I've mostly been focusing on Final Fantasy.
For a series with cult status it sure exhibits a lot of flaws. The one that gets me the most is that t…
For a series with cult status it sure exhibits a lot of flaws. The one that gets me the most is that t…
August 13, 2007
This is how OIS code actually looks:
Compare:
No typecodes. No casting.
OIS::Keyboard* keyboard = static_cast(inputSystem->createInputObject(OIS::OISKeyboard, false));
Compare:
OIS::Keyboard* keyboard = OIS::Keyboard::Create(inputSystem, false);
No typecodes. No casting.
July 26, 2007
You may have noticed that a number of the staffers have got new titles.
It's not an organisational shift - we're still all doing exactly what we were before. It's just an effort to better communicate exactly what it is that each one of us does. When all you can see is a bunch of people with identica…
It's not an organisational shift - we're still all doing exactly what we were before. It's just an effort to better communicate exactly what it is that each one of us does. When all you can see is a bunch of people with identica…
June 26, 2007
Do not underestimate the power of the pub trip when it comes to getting people to give you feedback on current processes. Maybe it's just a British thing, but people love complaining about work when they're at the pub, and "I spent X minutes waiting for tool Y" is just the kind of information that …
June 25, 2007
I've done some DB work tonight - reinstated a couple of optimizations that got lost around the attack in February, plus defragging a bunch of indices and cleaning up some BanMan data. I think the site feels faster but I'll see how it feels in the morning.
On an unrelated note, I started a new job to…
On an unrelated note, I started a new job to…
June 20, 2007
Well, the site should be much snappier now. I've changed the way the ads at the top of pages are loaded from "document.write" javascripts into full IFRAMEs; that way they get loaded asynchronously, instead of pausing the page while they make requests to the banner system. It really is the a…
June 15, 2007
If you're going to build a modding system into your game, please make sure you are familiar with the chain of responsibility pattern. Modders should not be overwriting assets in your game folder if they want to reskin something; they should be giving you a handler that redirects requests for the or…
June 07, 2007
So, one of the things that we at Gamedev Towers want to bring to the site in the future is a tagging system. I've spent the day so far working on a basic prototype.
Tags are very easy to implement, but difficult to design. Here's the basic idea of tags:
Allow users to attach a bunch of tags to things…
Tags are very easy to implement, but difficult to design. Here's the basic idea of tags:
May 30, 2007
Also, I just discovered that the Black Mesa Source team have posted an update.
If you don't know about this mod, go and check it out. Its initial goal was to remake Half-Life 1 on the Source engine properly. Valve released "Half-Life: Source" but it was just a weak copy-paste of the old assets onto …
If you don't know about this mod, go and check it out. Its initial goal was to remake Half-Life 1 on the Source engine properly. Valve released "Half-Life: Source" but it was just a weak copy-paste of the old assets onto …
May 30, 2007
Spent a couple of hours making a few bugfixes:
GDNet Gathering: Viewing received invitations are now fixed.
This was a pretty nasty bug. When we changed the site's password-handling code back in February, the 'user accounts' table got an extra column (FTP password). This user accounts table is used b…
This was a pretty nasty bug. When we changed the site's password-handling code back in February, the 'user accounts' table got an extra column (FTP password). This user accounts table is used b…
May 22, 2007
If you're going to build a social networking site that encourages (or evolves) a common practice of customizing the page's colors and style, then please, for the love of god, use things like classes and ID tags to make the components of the page accessible to CSS.
I'd previously assumed that MySpace…
I'd previously assumed that MySpace…
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