Day 18

The walls are kindof annoying, but definitely necessary.  I'm going to work on those some more this morning, then maybe do some quest stuff since that's more engaging.

Ten

I'm EVEN MORE officially a business--I've got my own Employer Identification Number!  =D

Eleven

I found a very useful DX FAQ here:  http://tomsdxfaq.blogspot.com/

This DX development has made me realize that writing a new map engine is going to take a LOT more work than I had anticipated.  Although the basic standalone system is fairly straightforward, integrating it into the game is going to be much harder.  First, if I change the map renderer then the map format is going to have to change on the client to support the new information on visibility/occlusion and walls, which means rewriting the editor's mapping component (both the compilation part and the visualization part).  Since the editor changes, the server will also have to change to read the new format.  Add in debugging time for all of this, and this project will probably take two weeks before it settles down into something useful--but in that time, I could have coded a significant number of other features.

Since the game does work without this map update and I'm not 100% sure it will fix the major bug I'm trying to nail down (BSOD), I think it would be best to develop in parallel:  work both on the map and on features that the game doesn't have at all, splitting my days between them.  Comparing the time I've spent working on the map so far (3 days) with its results (nothing new) with the time I spent working on gameplay updates (1 day) with its results (massive), I'm afraid I'll tinker away all my time with the map, mid-June will roll around and the game will still be lacking major features.

It's effective (if sometimes tedious) to fix and/or unify components that has been implemented, since you know how they are supposed to work--but unless they're fundamentally broken, it may not be the best use of time.  I'd say the map is at 80% right now, and I could get it to 95% with a week of work.  Quests and frontiering are at 0%, and I could pull them up to 50% in a few days.

Three

Fixed the installer and significantly updated it.  Added a very basic license agreement and rules.  Also put in a nice lookin' Evidyon banner at the top!  Also, I found that all I need to do in order to have the installer overwrite previous version is remember to update the version number each release.  I wish there were a way to make that automatic... Looks like it hasn't been updated since 2.5.0

Going to work on Vista file-permissions bug.

330

I'm now a file-permissions guru.  Basically, the Program Files directory has moved for programs that actually need to update themselves.  Unless you want to splay your program over multiple folders, it's now the Common Files directory.  Also, you can use the following function to find configured folders so I'm using it to put screenshots into "My Pictures" instead of the Evidyon install directory.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb762181.aspx

Four

Found AppVerifier from Microsoft.  Using it to test Evidyon for errors--let's see if it helps find BSOD!

...bummer.  That was a waste of time.  Oh well.

Installer works great now, tested the new version.  Also completetely revamped the instructions document, complete with fun Evidyon ASCII text.  Woot.

sixthirty

I now know Python, as well as how to write Excel spreadsheets with it.  It would be very powerful to write quest scripts with Python--my only reservation is the sensitive execution time of the server.