Why is so hard to follow coding guidelines?
Have you ever thought about that? How many times have you found code that, either doesn’t follow any rule or, simply, there is no rule for that case? So far, I have been working for different companies and, I have found these kind of problems. There could be different reasons, incomplete coding guidelines, misunderstood guidelines…
This week I have found this interesting article written by Nathan Myers (he has participated in the ISO/ANSI C++ Standard committee since 1993). He explains several cases that are not usually handled by all the style guidelines out there.
C++ Style Guidelines - A coding standard for C++ software developers and maintainers.
Good luck !
Posted on June 29th, 2008 in News | 1 Comment »
Lately, I have been reading so much about business and project management in the game industry.
Today I want to share with you some great articles about how you (me and everybody) can start your own games studio. Of course, these articles don’t cover all the aspects but contain very valuable information to start-up your own company.
The first is hosted in gamedev and it is written by Mona Ibrahim. The second one is written by Mark Morris and is hosted in bit-tech.
Business Planning by Mona Ibrahim :
How To Start Your Own Games Studio by Mark Morris :
- Part 1 : A good game idea.
- Part 2 : Develope the idea.
- Part 3 : Help you may need from the publisher.
- Part 4 : Closing the deal.
Good luck !
This post will cover how to use flash in your 3D games in a really fast and easy way. The library that we are going to use is gameswf (pronounced “game swiff”) and it is open source. Of course, this is not the only solution available, there is also a commercial middleware called Scaleform but this time I want to focus on the open source solution.
What is GameSWF ?
Gameswf is designed to be used as a UI library for computer and console games. To show that it is possible to integrate it with any engine I have implemented 2 solutions, the first one uses GLUT and, in the second one (in another tutorial) I have integrated it with Irrlicht.
Why I am writing this post? Because I don’t want any other programmer feels that there is not enough information in internet about using Flash in your 3D games! I have been working with this library lasts months and the results are pretty good, it can render shapes, text, gradients, sprites and it is even compatible with ActionScript (very basic actions). The only difference you will see between this solution and the original Flash Player is the aliasing. If you want antialiasing then you will have to either improve it or rewrite it.
Read the rest of this entry »
I like Apple keynotes for two reasons: expectation and surprises. Yesterday wasn’t the exception, during the WWDC keynote people all over the world became happy, the new iPhone 3G will be finally available very soon and with the highly expected GPS. I am pretty sure it is going to be one of the most popular cellphones ever, good price, great features, awesome design. However, that was not THE surprise for me.
I want to congratulate Digital Legends, and especially Xavier Carrillo. Because, either if you like to play with your cellphones or not, we have to recognize that they are doing such a great job. Their games have a graphics quality that is one step over the rest of the companies, I am not just talking about Kroll (the new game), but also One.
Finally I found some time to make my parents proud of me. I went to our old house and I tidied it up! Tons of dust everywhere, tons of boxes, tons of old memories. That house is like my memory chest.
Good news :
- I found tons of stuff that I didn’t even know I had.
- I found tons of games and consoles that I used to play when I was a kid ! NES, Super Nintendo, Game and Wath, Game Boy, Playstation, Nintendo 64 …
Bad news :
- I felt so bad to leave all my old games there so I classified and boxed everything. So… now I have tons of boxes in my apartment (and it is small). My question is : where should I keep them ?
- Even though I find the Nintendo Entertainment system, I couldn’t find its box.
I am very proud that my family could keep everything there and that we didn’t throw anything away.
