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.

WordDisc Features Detail

The WordDisc is coming along very well, with some of the more dynamic features appearing now that I have the base logic down. I may have mentioned a customizable color scheme last time - I've taken it a step further. Now, you can import textures and give them to the WordDisc to use as the background. You will also be able to use partially transparent textures for a see-through HUD feel. I may have also mentioned the several different character sets it would support - right now CS_All (all the characters on a keyboard) and CS_Letters have full support, while CS_Numbers is only supported graphically. The last thing I will tackle is CS_Custom, which will allow you to specify your own character set.

These are textures I found on Google images. You can pass it anything you can import in XNA.

The text, highlight, and line colors can be specified. The size of the disc can be specified. The texture, of course. The character set. Basically everything. All in the constructor. I'm aiming for maximum user-friendlyness here, and as much flexibility as possible. If you have any feature suggestions, let me know with a comment here or an email.

WordDisc Progress

Despite being busy the past several weeks with family affairs and work around the house, I have been continuing on the WordDisc, which is nearing completion. I originally intended the project to be small, in fact not much more than what it was in my last post, but my brother convinced me to expand it to a fully-functional and dynamic tool instead of simply a prototype to pitch an idea with. So, without further adieu, here is the new incarnation of the WordDisc:

Don't worry, the color scheme's customizable too.

The new graphics are generated by an algorithm upon creation, and as such I can both get a perfect circle every time and create as many divisions to as many rings as I want. I intend to have four character layouts: All, which includes all characters found in the original WordDisc and on a standard qwerty keyboard; Numbers, which will be one right of the characters 0 through 9; Letters, which is for any just a-z text; and Custom, which can be defined by the user.

Virtually everything can be customized, including the number of rings, the number of divisions per ring, and the characters displayed in each ring. The input will match the rings perfectly, regardless of the size of the WordDisc, and text input can be captured and returned to the program from the WordDisc before it is destroyed.

In all, I expect the WordDisc to be fully-functional and ready to be plugged into XNA games as soon as the end of the week. I intend to release it as an open-source download with an executable to demonstrate its functions and a sample project including its source code and a simple rig to get it up and running. I'll probably release it under a GPL, I'll have to look into those.

Alternative Text-Entry System for Joystick-Based Input Schemes

Or, as I prefer to call it, the WordDisc. I don't know that this hasn't been done before, but either way I'm writing a circular text input interface intended to be used with joysticks instead of the apparently standard on-screen keyboard setup (which is awful and has gone on for long enough). I suspect the only reason a system like this hasn't been full-on implemented in the consoles and console games (Wii excluded) is because of the tiny learning curve which would accompany it, and as I test it I realize more and more that the input system feels very natural and very easy. If one standardized layout could exist, I am sure people would pick up on it very quickly.

This, of course, needs a graphical upgrade.

Anyway, I was going to code it in C++ with SDL, my usual, but I was convinced that, since it's intended to be run on consoles, I should use XNA so I can actually port it onto a console. In addition, it serves as a nice introduction to XNA for me, which I've thus far found to be a pleasure. I'm thinking my next project will be in XNA, and will involve something I've been wanting to try for a couple years - 2D rendering. I might do a demo before I start on the game, I might not. Anyway, I'm off to finish this WordDisc so I can get to work on the next project!

GDC 2010

As I may have mentioned before, I was present at the Game Developer's Conference this past week, from Thursday to Saturday in the conference and in San Fransisco from Wednesday to Monday. The trip was completely worthwhile, giving me dozens of leads on where to start my career as well as introducing me to a slew of interesting people, and, as an added bonus, it was a great time!



I was there with Team Playground as well as James Xu and a few other people from DeVry. I met with more companies than I can count, and also had a very exciting interview with Dov Jacobson of Games That Work, who I'm excited to hear back from. I'm also looking to apply to Naughty Dog, Sony, Bally's, Gazillion, High Voltage, Intel, and a bunch of other places. As a team we met with Majesco about publishing ShadowCast, as well as with Randy from the FBI about an upcoming contract for a field agent training simulator. Also, ShadowCast was on display at DeVry's booth the entire time, and it was really nice to see our work at the conference.



In between the expos and the interviews I spent some time enjoying the company of friends and the local night life. San Fransisco has a very exciting night life, with a lot to do and see, assuming you're of age, and we had a blast. We also attended a couple parties and did some networking there. I have a lot of follow-up emails to write, and if you're reading this and haven't heard from me, please contact me.



I'll keep updating with my progress towards a career, and as for GDC11 - expect me to be there.

ShadowCast :: Complete

We've finished ShadowCast for our senior project. The following trailer is going to be displayed at the GDC in San Fransisco in two weeks at DeVry's booth.



We've also gotten a lot of attention because of this project and what we were able to accomplish. This coming week I will post a link to the executable and redesign Team Playground's website. I intend to write some posts in the near future about how certain elements of the game were accomplished in a technical respect.

ShadowCast Reload

Here's an update on ShadowCast. Can't write much, more coding to do!



Oh, and we're entering this into a contest to get a free trip to GDC. It's all through DeVry. Deadline's Monday. Busy busy busy.