Mirlix

Im back from the GCDC and the GC, it was great and i meet a bunch of new people and even a greater deal of friends. Some of the talks were one of the best i ever heard, especially the Raytracing talk from Intel and the Post Mortem on Titan Quest. Im not writing any details about the GCDC/GC here , because first i have to write the article for the “Entwickler Magazin”, a german developer magazine, who gave us the press tickets and maybe i will write some stuff for gamedev.net. If its online i will link it, so be patient. I havnt slept much during the event. One day we visited a cinema and missed the last tram so we had to walk. After one and a half hour we finally found someone who could give us a describtion how to find our hotel. It was reather simple. “Just walk until the next trafficligth, then turn right and at the next traffic light left and our are there”. He was right, but forgot to mention that the next traffic light was over 5 km away:( .

I use my CBMS(Componet Based Message System) more then ever before, because i now have some time on my hands and try to use it to build a small game. Doing this was the right way to test the system. It looked like it was ready for work, but working with it shows that there a still some features missing which either prevent the whole system to work or simply are to complicated to use. Before i can continue with the game i have to fix this things, its not totally surprising for my, i planned to use the game as an test for the system, but i dont thought it would be so much work. At the same time it gets clearer and clearer to my that the basic idea is working really well, just need the new features and a bit polishing. If i can stick with my plan a first version will be ready next year in september. I have a period of 6 month between my work in munich and my computer science study, i will use this time to kick the project a large bit forward and then release it under a open source license. Before this i dont dare to release to code to humanity, some bits arent documented or commented at all, mostly the first bits, where i thought “its just to test something, i wont use this piece of code in a few weeks ever again”, so i have to comment the code as well. But its fun working on a big project again after some small one just for fun. You work under complete different enviroments and have other aspects in mind during the development. During the weekend i wont be able to code, cause i visit friends and my familiy at home and my programming pc will be still in munich. I think i will use the time to think about some design changes for the CBMS .

I had a holdiay today, so i could spent the whole day working on my Component Based Message System. But befor i can say what it is i think i have to explain what a Component Based System is, i hope this paper will help, after i finished the first test with the system i will write a complete paper. If anyone is interested in this or just want to talk about it, send me a mail a write a comment.

Today i was able to insert the inputsubsystem into my testgame and it worked like i planned it, what is a big relief. But after using it in combination with my graphicsubsystem i found some things which should be improved, so my todo-list  is getting longer again. But luckly it looks like the main idea is working pretty well and i will be able to create a complete gameengine based on the system, which hopefully will enable other programmers to create games much faster as with the normal engines out there and much more reuse of code, but this is still theory.

If anyone is on the DiGRA2007 and want to know more about the Component Based Message System visit my talk, i also will put the slides online after event.

Oh, and sorry for the long tiem between the post, hope i will write more often, blogging is still new to me.

It looks like it will be a really good year for me. First i have the chance to write for a programmer magazine about the GCDC(gcdc.eu) , which saves the entry fees and i get paid for the article. Second my abstract about a Component Based Message System i wrote get accepted for the DiGRA2007(digra2007.jp). This will be my first international talk . If possible i will try to create a game engine based on my compoent system(later more about it). I hope this year will continue like this, at the moment i simply rocks.