Comments for Scientific Ninja

Comment on Thoughts on SlimDX 2 by Rim

Rim — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:46:37 +0000

Assuming you don’t go timebombing your releases you’ll still have MDX beat on the compatibility front

Comment on Thoughts on SlimDX 2: Interfaces by Rim

Rim — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:42:47 +0000

FWIW, I think I agree to this change. I’ve seen some remarks that SlimDX isn’t quite ’slim enough’ in mimicking the native API and this change should go a long way in delivering the requested slimness. It’s probably also more transparent than wrapping stuff in concrete classes. I still remember the fun I had trying to figure out how they envisioned I should do occlusion queries back in MDX.

Comment on Thoughts on SlimDX 2 by Josh Petrie

Josh Petrie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:09:03 +0000

Well, there will definitely be a slew of breaking changes in SlimDX 2, that's part of why we want to start talking about things as early as possible -- so developers have some idea of the scope of the changes they'd need to make to upgrade to 2.0. We plan on continuing development of the 1.0 codeline such that there is significant concurrent development overlap between the two versions. We want to enable developers to migrate to 2.0 on their schedule and not ours. Probably the only thing we wouldn't add to 1.0 after 2.0 ships are entirely new APIs, like Direct3D 12 or something.

Comment on Thoughts on SlimDX 2 by Rim

Rim — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:01:40 +0000

Well, unlike some other Managed DirectX libraries at least you didn’t release a version 1.1 that replaced all getX/setX methods with properties because you forgot to use those in the first place. You beat Microsoft’s compatibility promise bigtime

Comment on Write Games, Not Engines by Handy Vandal's Almanac » Blog Archive » OOP Game Design Theory - Resources for Game Designers

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:26:02 +0000

[...] “Mandatory reading: http://scientificninja.com/advice/write-games-not-engines”; [...]

Comment on SlimDX February 2010 Released by JT

JT — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:52:21 +0000

It’s too bad that there isn’t a future for the existing sample framework. It was nicely put together and I got a lot of use out of it as a starting point.

Comment on Welcome Back by Gregory

Gregory — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:49:53 +0000

I have an abandoned site made with Drupal. I really spent a lot of time building it, make it look and behave the exact way I wanted.

Then, time passed and it faded out: things I wanted to post about just piled up in a corner. Now, when I fire the site up, it spits tons of deprecated warnings because the web server where it runs is updated on a regular basis and lots of PHP function used by the deployed Drupal installation are now obsolete.

I really don't feel like updating it, even less to the upcoming Drupal 7. It's such a painful process I don't want even think about it. Looking back, I spent more time building the platform than writing content. That doesn't even serve as a showoff as I never planed to become a Drupal consultant or do web based stuff for a living.

Then I saw your first post about Tumblr and the importance of writing content instead of tweaking the platform. I didn't find the time to give Tumblr a try yet but well I more and more believe this is the way to go.

Comment on Morimoto by Pork Belly, Two Ways – Scientific Ninja

Pork Belly, Two Ways – Scientific Ninja — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:30:36 +0000

[...] about a new butcher that had recently opened up nearby, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. When I ate at Morimoto last year, one of the amazing dishes I ordered was a slow-braised pork belly served with a rice [...]

Comment on Write Games, Not Engines by Josh Petrie

Josh Petrie — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:45:09 +0000

Yes, your impression is basically accurate: the flashy, eye-catching title of the post aside, the point I'm trying to make is that it's usually better to evolve or grow your engine rather than attempt to design it and build it directly, in a vacuum, with no understanding of the requirements of the game you ultimately want to build with it.

It's also worth pointing out that this was one of the earliest articles I wrote, back when I intended this site to be more of an article repository than a blog. The intention was to link this article to beginning/intermediate level programmers rather than repeat my arguments ad nauseam on forums and IRC channels. Essentially I'm saying that building good engines requires you have some experience building or working with the things those engines will be used for -- beginners typically lack that. This advice is somewhat less applicable to developers who already have several completed games under their belt.

Comment on Write Games, Not Engines by YoYoFreakCJ

YoYoFreakCJ — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:31:48 +0000

This is a nice post. But I would like to comment it with the following: You are advicing us to build a game, rather than an engine. Let's consider a some-experienced programmer, who knows the SOLID principles and how to use use them in his code. After he writes his game, what will be left is a game loop, and a few classes like an animation model, input handling, collision detection and a few more. At least, this is how it should be. Isn't taking those classes and putting them inside of a library sort of making an engine? An engine is a structure that keeps all needed aspects of a game in place, and helping them to communicate. From my point of view it looks like you're not trying to tell us to forget about engines, but you're rather giving us a short introduction on how to proceed in the engine development, while at the same time stopping script kiddies screaming around "look at me, I'm writing my own engine!". That's my impression on the article.

But you do make some really good points as far as I can tell. Thank you for this great article!