Sheesh, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Too much has happened to try and fill anything in, but basically work has been mega-busy. When I haven’t been working, I’ve been killing sleep time with GarageGamges Torque engine. I fancy myself a game developer wannabe, and hey it’s fun. Well, they just stole a whole lot more of my time. They recently came out with Torque 2D. It’s a simplified 2D game engine, complete with comprehensive particle emitters and physics.

Honestly for anyone who has wanted to try their hand at game development, and wanted to get started quickly, and affordably, Torque is the best deal out there. It’s not just a rendering engine. It has networking, physics, particle effects, and scripting for game logic. It lets an armchair game developer like me burn my precious sleep time on building a game instead of building a game engine so that I could eventually get around to building a game. On top of that, GarageGames has a thriving community to help me when I get stuck. They also provide a ready-made distribution channel to help me publish my game if I so choose.

All in all, it’s a pretty sweet deal. If you’ve ever found yourself wanting to try your hand at building a game, go check them out.

Happy Gaming

-Synwan

Slight departure from the normal postings here… I was reading securityfocus this morning and ran across this article regarding a compromise at T-Mobile. It seems that T-Mobile has had a significant breach of customer data. The worst part is that T-Mobile has yet to notify customers about this breach. I hope they know what they’re doing. I seriously doubt it though.

-Synwan

Well it’s been a while since I posted. Sorry about that. Things are starting to wind down a little bit, so hopefully I can get CXMLNode ready to distribute. I’ll post when it’s ready. In the meantime… Happy Holidays! Make sure to take some time to spread some good. I hope everybody has an enjoyable holiday season!

-Synwan

About three years ago, I was hired by a company that develops a Linux distribution. I went, willingly, eagerly even. But I have to wonder, each step that is made is a bit of a gamble. Take .NET for instance. I’ve never played with it. I have no experience with it, other than reading the material that I track down. If .NET were to become the dominant development architecture, I would quickly find myself obsolete. Therein lies the quandry. How do you know which technologies to pursue? There are too many for any one person to stay current in. One could go with the path of least resistence, and just follow their career path, but that’s not really practical. One could burn themselves out trying as many things as they can, and avoid being a specialist, but that’s also not practical. So how can one figure out what to pursue, and what to leave by the wayside?

Well, here’s my myopic litmus test.

• Is the technology open, and utilizing existing standards where applicable?
• Is the technology applicable to a wide problem set?
• Is there real support behind the technology, rather than just a marketing blitz?
• Is the learning curve justified?

If you can answer yes to each of these questions, then perhaps a given technology is worth looking into. I’m sure someone has come up with a better test, and if so, by all means use it. I, however, haven’t seen it. Ultimately it’s all still a gamble. I just hope my number continues to come up.

-Synwan