ThePentiumGuy

Thanks for the replies guys. I have a feeling I'll be writing the book - It's going to be a long road down, but I think it'll be worth it in the end.

Cliffnotes Background: I've had this site, vbProgramming, up for a while. I mean there's a sizable collection of tutorials related to game programming with VB.NET there. The site was pretty active last year. Now: I'm writing a book about this very topic, a pretty big portion (about 1/4) of the content is already contained on my site. It's a daunting task, but I'd make some cash and look really good on college apps. Insetad, should I make this an open source book (WikiBook, OurMedia, CreativeCommons, etc)? The problem is, I'd need a large userbase, which I don't have anymore. Any thoughts and opinions would be appreciated. Not Cliffs: ------ It's all about giving back to the community. Information exchange is crucial in this world, and without it we woudln't progress. As programmers, we learn from our masters and our peers. Beginner programmers are guided by more experienced programmers (or resources they've created, such as articles, books, or websites). As these new programmers get more experienced, it becomes their duty to give rise to the inexperienced programmers. The cycle continues... A month ago I decided to write a book, "Learning Visual Basic.NET - The Game Programmer's Path." The book uses the website's tried-and-true trial and error method of teaching. It quickly introduces the reader to Visual Basic.NET and progresses through game development. It begins with simple games such as tic-tac-toe, pong, checkers, tetris, brickout, demonstrating the development process and game loops. Then, the book moves onwards to introduce AI with games such as pacman, and space shooters. Advanced scrolling and level-creation is introduced with a game similar to Mario. Complicated event-driven concepts such as information storage (character stats, inventory, etc), optimization, etc. are introduced in a mini RPG. I haven't decided yet whether or not a section on 3D will be introduced or not. Here's the dillemma I'm facing. Information exchange is meant to be free right? Right. Well the flip side of the coin is: If I wrote this book I'd make profit, and have a major ++ on my college application. Problem is, books take months to write. I'm up for it, however. Well, going back to the Information = Free idea. If I made a WikiBook (http://www.wikibooks.org) would anyone contribute? A WikiBook is an open-source book which anyone is free to edit (and features a History system that allows an article to be reverted to a previous version if it gets messed up). The key to such a project is a large fanbase, as you'd have many users submitting small bits of content at a time, which amounts to something. It's a shame, really - last summer (when I was constantly updating the site) if I launched the project I might have gotten this project rolling along quite smoothly. ------ Cliffs are at the top section Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks, -The Pentium Guy

I've been looking into this for a few days. Does anyone know any website that allows you to automatically download their stock data? Or, how would this be feasable ... I'm not quite sure where to look. -The Pentium Guy

Is that Kendo? Because I'm starting Kendo next week :D

I almost misread that as John Kennedy. :).

You know I was messing with you right?

Pfft. I read Gates' crappy (auto?)-biography. He was our age when he was programming TicTacToe in QBasic as his first game. No way he invented that ;).

I was seriously expecting a nerdy group with glasses and squinting looks. Oh wait. Looks like we have one amongst us ;)

So what do you use to type Mr Soap Man? http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/9140/picguitar27sc.jpg Sexy as ever... (haha, just kidding, I'm so egotistical though) Cheers, -The Pentium Guy

Whaa. It's been so long. I haven't programmed since the last summer. Things have been going great - I was in India for 2-3 months anyways. And then school started....that's when things went downhill. Staying up till 2, barely getting my schoolwork done. School's awesome though, extremely selective enterance exam - 50 kids allowed - but holy crap, I actually meet kids that want to learn, explore, etc. Best part is, I'm taking Robotics, Machine Shop, and Robot Programming as an elective... So for the past 4-6 months I've been into hardware...Anandtech, best site in the world, virtually instantaneous replies and all - it's almost like instant messenger :). What else about hardware, not that you care...I'm designing a heatsink for a school project! So, here's my "Hi" to all of you. I really haven't updated my website in a while, nor have I been here for a while. Feels so good to be back. -The Pentium Guy

He might have posted in the wrong section. But the 2048x2048 image jsut might be taking a long time to load (becuase it's a large image right). -The Pentium Guy

No shortcut, just the EXE. And I did try the Application.StartupPath method ...But the werid part is, a reboot fixed it all. I am so pissed.

Holy crap. Holy.....crap I've never had this problem before, but when I do a Mesh.loadheirarchyfromfile("Meshes/Tiny.x", other arguments), sometimes the file path gets weird. On my computer the project is loaded in the bin directory in My Documents/Visual STudio projects. And doing "Meshes/Tiny.x" loads the file from the bin directory. But on OTHER PEOPLES computers, "Meshes/Tiny.x" searches through My Documents/Meshes/Tiny,x --> as in MY DCOUMENTS (C:/documents and settings/thepentiumguy, which they don't have). The mesh I've chosen resides in the bin folder of the application, and all I've provided is the "Meshes/Tiny.x" argument, and NOT a "My Documents/blahblah" argument. What is going on? And how do you fix this? Edit: And for your information, this works on some computers (including some that aren't mine), but not others.. Thank you very much. -The Pentium Guy

Actually, I figured it out. On SoftwareVertexProcessing, right after you render your animated mesh you have to set the dxDevice.RenderState.VertexBlend back to 0. On HardwareVertexProcessing it really doens't matter, but I think it's better practice to reset it back to 0. Hopes that helps people, -The Pentium GUy

This is when I choose not to render the mesh as animated actually. I made a mistake in my first post: the 500FPS on the 9800Pro with Hardware = animated mesh, the 6 FPS on the IGP is with a still mesh. I'll probably switch to TriangleStrips for my heightmap instead of TriangleLists sooner or later. Strips are being a bit buggy. I'll have to figure out some way to get the animated mesh to work though, with hardwarevertexprocessing

Sorry. I should have been more clear - my 9800Pro works on Hardware, but the computer with IGP works only on Software - which seems to make sense. Unfortunately mesh animation (which I got, and adapted a little, from RobyDX) doesn't work on Software - and that is annoying me :). So after asking around GameDev a bit, there's nothing really I can do about this computer supporting only Software, and not hardware. So I guess my new question is how to make this Mesh Animation work on software?

I have a computer with a 9800Pro, which is great and supports hardware vertex processing. But then again, I'm doign some "beta" testing and came to the conclusion that this HP doesn't support hardware vertex processing.... Half the things that I do require hardware vertex processing, and this computer makes me use software veretx processing, dropping my frames per second from 500 to 6 (this is rendering an animated mesh, heightmap and skybox). Is this a common problem? Computers with integrated graphics require software vertex processing? See the reason I'm asking is, I went to dxdiag -> Display -> Test Direct3D and it said it supported "Direct3D 9 Hardware Accellerated Devices." But how come my application doesn't work with Hardware? This computer's only a year old. The computer next to me (another HP) is about 2 months old, has integrated graphics, and STILL doesn't work with hardware. Just that one change from Hardware to Software makes it work. Edit: I just did a test using DeviceCaps and found out that my IGP computer doens't SupportHardwareTransformAndLight or SupportPureDevice. Can anyone explain if I'm doing something wrong? dxDiag indicates that Hardware works, but my applicaiton won't work with Hardware, I have to use Software vertex processing. Thanks, -The Pentium Guy

I'm actually not sure at all how you assign an icon to a type of file...but I can show you to look...java.awt.ImageIcon (it oculd also be in javax.Swing, not too sure).

WHAA. This guy rules! I should help him translating more tutorials....damn though school's getting started in a few days and I gotta read 3 more books for summer reading...

He's talking about making this automatically setting up port forwarding on a given router. Not sure how to do this but the easiest thing to do is link the user to http://www.portforward.com ;)

I'd like to bump this thread, because I'm not exactly sure what the code does.

Gotcha :D

THATS why my heightmap wiggles a bit! I think my hardware's up to the task though, I got a 9800Pro overclocked to XT speeds. I always thought you could enable AA/AF using DirectX, but I could never find the option

Now I feel stupid, what the hell does Anti Aliasing do? And how do you disable it