GRG's Miscellany

I am shedding another development skin. My first solo game (working title: FirstQuest) is bogged down in 'engine development'. Until now, I have been using 'enjoying coding' as a motivation tool to keep up momentum on the project. This, coupled with the fact I enjoy systems engineering, has led me into the clichéd problem of over-engineering the game engine. Looking forward to working part-time from September (having one day a week to work on games) has made me re-assess how I develop code. I now intend to split 'play coding' and 'work coding'. Work coding: Stick to agile principles: Develop only what is required to move the game forward.   Keep code as modular as possible, but DO NOT engineer systems.   Stick RIGOROUSLY to test-driven development - EVERY bug needs a unit test before fixing it. During the one day part-time, ONLY do work coding.  Keep play coding for evenings/weekends.  (This should allow use of work velocities) Play c...

My brother bought a job lot of busted XBox 360s and recently gave up trying to fix them.  I have stepped into the breach and decided to show these machines who is boss. At the moment, it looks like I might even be able to fix one as well. :) I tried replacing the thermal compound , but to no avail. Then, I found this article , which seemed a little extreme.  However, to test it out, I tried firing up the XBox while leaning heavily on the CPU heatsink.  Lo and behold, the RROD had disappeared! So tomorrow, I am off to a hardware store to pick up some nuts, bolts and washers to properly squeeze this processor back down.  I'll update with how it goes... UPDATE: Well, I busted it.  Now it shows a different error code.  I suspect I tightened the bolts too much and the stress on the motherboard broke more connections. I feel like a ham-fisted dumb-ass.

Why? I've been using OpenVPN for gaming.  I have heard of Hamachi , but open source tastes better. I wanted to have an OpenVPN client running 24/7, so I tried running it on a low-power laptop.  This led to unacceptable latency and disconnects.  The encryption load was just too much. Having a powerful desktop running would solve that, but running costs build up all too fast. What? Via produce processors with low power consumption and hardware acceleration for encryption with their Padlock system. After quite a lot of searching for a cheap Via machine, I found this on eBay .  It's got a Via C7 processor (all of which have Padlock), and it turns out to use less than 30W even on peak load. How? I replaced the 1GB Compact Flash card with an 8GB one, then installed Ubuntu Server 12.4.1 via a USB stick.  (Choosing to install the OpenSSH server). I had found plenty of sources telling me to check which engines were available.  However, when I t...

http://thelinuxexperiment.com/guinea-pigs/tyler-b/how-to-test-hard-drive-for-errors-in-linux/ "badblocks -b 4096 -p 4 -c 16384 -w -s /dev/sda" WARNING: This test wipes all data on the hard drive

Success!  I have completed step 1 of my robotic world domination plan! I now have a laptop with Eclipse and leJOS installed, which can control my newly-flashed Lego Mindstorms NXT brick! The tutorial is actually really easy to follow.  I used Linux, which required me to manually set the control brick into 'firmware updating mode', but that was a piece of cake. Setting up Eclipse was also fairly straightforward, following the instructions here . The only gotchas I encountered were: - Setting up udev rules to allow me to access the control brick via USB.  Solution: After creating the rules file, remember to add yourself to the 'lego' group and restart the PC! - Connection to control brick kept failing in 'PC' mode.  I could upload a program and run it from a 'leJOS NXT project', but not have the PC run an application that remote controls the brick.  Solution: Needed to install it onto a 32bit OS (thankfully I had a laptop which fit the bill...

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a great game.  It has made me feel like a brutal martial arts expert, a stealth-killer, an elite techno-hacker - all the things that Batman is.  To my mind, that's what a game is for: it makes you feel like you're another person, in another universe so you can experience their story. However, the game has reached a shelf-point for me.  I hate rage-quitting, but that's what it made me do.  I'm not sure if I'll go back to complete it.  I'll explain why. Two types of battle which work really well: Firstly, fighting off a mob of henchmen, with the combo and counter moves.  It makes me feel like Batman: I feel anxious to avoid being hit, I weigh up the individual opponents and choose which to take out first, I spread my attacks between multiple opponents and choose a variety of special moves to help.  I also like that it slows down time a bit when you need to counter, so you have time to realise it and press the appropriate b...

Seriously annoying exception in WinDeviceDriver constructor because of 'transparent' code accessing 'security critical...' yada yada yada.  Turns out .Net 4.0 has some trumped up security code so Microsoft can break everything. Anyway, the workaround is this: In the AssemblyInfo.cs file of the assembly containing the offending class (OpenTK in this case), add: [ assembly: SecurityRules ( SecurityRuleSet. Level1 ) ] et voila!