Motionwerks

Back when I was at the GDC, I saw a demo of a PC motion controller by Sixense in Left 4 Dead 2, and playing around with it, it was awesome; it was way better than other motion controls on the market, including the just-announced PS Move (which was on display there as well). Well, I saw it on Steam, and that was all I needed to pick up the consumer model, the Hydra by Razer. Key to my decision: the SDK available for it.

It's very nice, from what I've read of it. Don't have the hardware yet, but I've been thinking..what environment should I start playing with this in? The SDK comes as a couple of dlls, which is really nice, and what's nicer is documentation, geared at C++ development. And what engine is better for C++ development than Leadwerks?

So, I'm using the Leadwerks demo right now, coding up a simple environment to use the Sixense controller in. I have a few ideas of what to make, but nothing specific yet..although my friend Leo expressed some interest in working with me on something more formal (more on that later?), so this might go somewhere. Either way, I may be posting more about it.

As for Android development, I haven't forgotten about it. I have a live wallpaper which mostly works, but I want to tweak some things before releasing it (here or on the market) and I'd like to improve the performance of it a bit, too (right now it uses more RAM than I'd like...but I think most of that is because of the extra buffer I have, which is saving a lot of CPU). I do have a solid idea for a mobile game, and I think it could really catch on. More on that later.

Gone Mobile

I've finally upgraded myself to the 21st Century of Telephony with a Droid 3, my pick as the most desirable android-based phone/pocket-sized computer-from-five-years-ago. As it happens, I'm going to be doing some mobile work now, again. I guess I've done a lot of mobile work so far, and honestly I've enjoyed it, so why not?

I'm thinking the first project will bring Dorthu Beats up to speed on a mobile device; the site simply does not work on there as-is. The mobile version will have smaller (and likely different) images to save bandwidth, will suggest not streaming content, and will allow touch-based gestures if possible. Also, different views for different orientations. I'll probably also tweak the way audio is delivered to make it less data-heavy than the normal version (the normal version begins preloading audio before you start it to improve performance, but this is less-than-desirable if you're paying for the data transfer..especially because it will often load songs that you end up not playing at all, and relies on client-side caching to ensure duplicate requests aren't being made).

I'm trying to decide what kind of app I should write for the platform first..I have a lot of ideas, but nothing that's very useful. I'm thinking of trying a custom unlock screen that shows the strings of a bass and unlocks when you fret the right sequence of notes, but that seems impractical...I'd like to do some sort of a gesture-based game, but I don't have much of an idea past that....part of me wants a compiler on my phone, but that's just silly. I donno. We'll see where it goes.

Db

Introducing Dorthu Beats, or Db, my newest, and probably best, website. Check it out here: http://beats.dorthugames.com


The site is made to host music I record, but I'm also very happy with the way it turned out. It's a very different take on web design than the other sites I've made, but I feel it accomplishes all of its goals far better than if it conformed to a more conventional design.

Features to come: Facebook integration (ability to Like and share current tracks), "Setlist" style navigation to individual tracks.

Professional!

I have been offered, and accepted, a job from Accenture Federal Services, a subsidiary of the global company Accenture. Accenture Federal Services primarily does consulting work for the government, and that's likely what I'll be doing. I'm starting training on Jan 10th in Reston, VA, and once the program's over I'll find a project and be doing something code-related for someone in the DC Area (because of the nature of Accenture's project setup, which I would like to mention is really cool, I don't know in any greater detail what I'll be doing just yet). The training course I'm going through is the Java program, so I'll probably be coding in Java.

My job title is Associate Software Engineer. In six months, it'll be Software Engineer. Pretty sweet, right? I'm excited.

In other news, Merry Christmas! My brother and I both got Zunes this year (from different parents though, weird how that is), and that's enough to prompt me to develop something for the Zune. It doesn't appear to be too different from the other mobile platforms I've developed for (iPhone, Android), and it uses XNA Game Studio (which is to say, C# .NET). I'm thinking I need to tackle the whole "No AIM for the Zune" issue, because that simply won't do for me. After some research, I've decided to use Fluent.TOC, which is a C# .NET implementation of the Talk to OsCar protocol (TOC), seeing as I won't need all the features of the full OSCAR protocol anyway. Keep an eye out for it!

Totally Serious

Introducing the totally professional version of DorthuGames.com! Just wrote it up today since I've been talking to some more businessy companies, as opposed to the video game companies I'd previously been speaking to, and I figured it would be good to have if it better suits their interests.

So, where is it? Same place. I got it all done in a different style sheet and controlled by a cookie, so all you need to do is hit the button in the top right of the page. Or, for convince, mostly to link to it, I added DorthuGames.com/changeTheme.php?theme=2, which will set the cookie for the current session only. Of course, you can always click the button on the top-right of professional page to switch back to the cooler, let's call it "indie" page.

Facebook

I've been working with VG Ware Tech again, this time hired on as a contractor part-time, and we've been experimenting with Facebook support in our apps. Facebook's APIs are set up pretty nicely, and the OpenGraph protocol is too. In fact, I liked OpenGraph enough to add it to my site; If you visit any project's page on here, you'll find a "Like" button at the bottom, and because of the included meta-data, the page will appear on Facebook as something you can be a fan of.

I'm considering applying a similar concept to the Warhammer Army Organizer. I can easily make it Facebook-enabled, and I can also use their Javascript API to let you post and share lists through Facebook, which could be useful since most hobby shops I know of now use Facebook to announce events and the like. In addition, I'm considering altering my concept for a profile system to make the entire application on the web.

Warhammer Army Organizer 2.0

I've decided to remake my old Warhammer Army Organized program, originally written in Java back in 2005. The old program ran exclusively in the command prompt, and only worked on Windows. The new version will have a full user interface as well as the ability to run on OS X.

For those of you not familiar with Warhammer, it's a tabletop war game produced by Games Workshop, and one of my very fond hobbies.

Right now the project is in the design phase, and the biggest challenge I expect to be the UI. I'll keep you posted, and screenshots as they become available.