Global Game Jam: Kicking off the Triangle

The first global game jam has been kicked off! Although I can't participate all weekend, I did help get things started at the local triangle game jam. You can check in on them with this ustream:



Icarus studios is being an excellent host, setting us up in their motion capture room and having wired up a LAN for us. We've got just under 20 participants, with 4 games in development (brainstorm names: Breeder, Tethered, Robot Swarm, Buttons and Mindy).

Submitting Our Fails (or, how I love the Error Shader)

I pestered Michael Noland to submit a few images from Emergent to I Get Your Fail, which if you haven't subscribed to you should. ;)

This one is my fav. Several years ago Tim Preston wrote the "error shader", for any situation where a renderer can't bind a shader... and we haven't been able to wipe the smirk off his face yet.

This particular scene is amusing with some error shader, and some missing lighting.

Vista Send To Clipboard As Name

Vista 64bit has been a fairly smooth move for me, but one feature of Windows XP I missed dearly was Send To Clipboard As Name (from the Power Toys).

I frequently have one or several files I'd like to get as fully qualified text strings to dump into a shell command, another application, or just a text file when keeping notes.

Well, I found it, Vista supports Copy as Path on a file explorer context menue if you hold SHIFT when opening the context menu.

The image shows the context menu with the SHIFT exposed items:

• Pin to Start Menu
• Add to Quick Launch
• Copy as Path

msinfo32 - big brother of dxdiag

Developers likely already know about dxdiag, a good tool to get information related to graphics. However, did you know about msinfo32?

Msinfo32 and it's predecessors (msd, winmsd) have shipped with DOS and Windows for quite some time. These tools are a great one-stop-shop to get information about a machine: device memory mappings, drivers, environment variables, startup programs, history of program crashes, etc...

Msinfo32 is easy to launch and save a computer's data to a single binary or export to a text file, which you can examine on other computers. Handy to know about when you're debugging across several machines.

A Gamebryo Tower Defense Game: Defense Grid The Awakening

Happy holidays! I have a gift to give away, one free copy of Defense Grid: The Awakening. It is a Tower Defense game built with Gamebryo, just released on Steam. [Update: Deokhee Lee takes it!]

Here's a youtube video-interview that previews the gameplay nicely:

HD Video

If you're keen on the free copy, drop me an email at vincent.scheib at the emergent.net. [Update: Deokhee Lee takes it!] If you miss out, you can pick it up for $20. If you're feeling grinchy, there's always the free flash Desktop Tower Defense... but... lacking the richness.

Coder Tip: Loading symbols in Visual Studio 2008 the easy way.

Bo Wilson keyed me in to this Visual Studio 2008 (VC90) Tip:

• Debugging through some code touching Microsoft libraries (e.g. DirectX)?
  
• Wish you had symbols, but too lazy to set them up again, cache them, wait for them all to download, blah?
• Visual Studio 2008 makes it easy:
• Just open the Modules window (Debug, Windows, Modules)
• Right click a DLL, and load symbols from the Microsoft Symbol Servers.
  

Link dump: Genetic Polygons, Scored Gameplay, ActiveX alternative, Gamebryo Training, Visualizing Files, Opening Files

Genetic algorithm placing 50 polygons to represent the Mona Lisa I'm a fan of genetic algorithms... I'd have loved to see this one with triangles instead of n-polygons, though. This image is early in the evolution, the final image is a good approximation. ;)

Reset A fun, short, game. Cool novelty: the gameplay is synchronized with the music. Friend Adrienne Walker pointed out that this could be a great game jam theme.

Google Native Client A plugin recently revealed by Google. Cross browser, runs sand boxed native code. Could be a good alternative to ActiveX.

Gamebryo 101
A university created webpage packed full of training videos, tutorials, and resources related to the product I work on.

WinDirStat I recently gave up on SpaceMonger -- it was having issues with lots of files. This survey convinced me to move over to WinDirStat, which works very well.

Mr EditGotoFindCombo Nice tip for Visual Studio programmers: Quickly open files with sub-string prefix matching: CTRL-D, type:">of ", then start your file name. More tips on the linked page.