I will now begin hosting the current build of the Driver Car Importer on Google Code until it is finished. Keep in mind that it is a horribly crippled executable at the moment, and you may or may not be able to import a car at the moment. It is intended for people who are curious as to what the current state is, or those who are brave (or foolish) enough to try and import something with it to be able to download a fairly recent build of the program. Click here to go to the project's homepage.

Debuggers are Great!

Many beginning programmers, and even some more advanced programmers, have yet to discover the incredible tool that is a debugger. I too am guilty of waiting far too long to learn how to use one. Although simple printf/cout "debugging" may work for some smaller projects, it is far from ideal. It takes time to type out individual cases, it clutters the code, and it takes a much longer time to track down where difficult problems are arising. This is especially true with memory errors, where it is unclear what is happening to the memory and where. Debuggers really shine here, and replacing text output with a true debugger dramatically improves the speed in which issues can be fixed. Useful features included with most debuggers are the ability to step through the program line by line, add breakpoints before code gets executed, and output the contents of any variable currently in scope. It takes everything one could do using printf/cout and then some. So why don't more beginners use them? Being a novice programmer myself, I can say that the debugging interface can be quite daunting at first. Setting up a project for debugging can also be difficult if one is not familiar with all the flags that need to be set. I recommend anyone who is not comfortable with a debugger follow a tutorial, and you may soon find that the debugger is not as hard to use as it looks. Even if you do not have a program that needs debugging it is a good idea to get familiar with the interface, as every programmer will need to use it at some point. You might as well get comfortable with it now, rather than trying to learn it while being frustrated by a tricky bug. There's my ramblings for the day, if you haven't already, give a debugger a try!

PS. I still don't feel very good at blogging yet, but hopefully if I continue then my posts will get better =).

Potential Idea For Wet Surfaces

This is completely untested, since I have little to no experience with graphic programming. The idea is that you can take a texture with a normal and specular map and modify it so that it appears as though a surface is wet (either all across it or only in certain parts) by modifying the normal and specular. One could then apply a colored texture to it, and the specular would make it shiny, whist the normal change would make it appear to actually be on the surface, rather than completely flat. With some fancy calculations this could potentially have a flowing effect, or drying off effect, such as when a character walks out of a pool onto the ground, it would leave footprints that would dry away. In the context of horror games, it could potentially be used for blood effects.

Trying out blogging.

I figured I try out this whole blogging deal, more of a way for me to clarify my thoughts than for others to read. I'm not sure how long it will last, or what it will have on it. If I like it then it may go on for a long time, or I may have sudden spurts of blogging followed by months of silence. Also the title is just a placeholder until I determine what the blog is about, as of right now I have no idea what I will be compelled to write about.

But enough about me and my blog, here is some actual content for it. Recently I've been stuck with a lack of motivation to program. (I program tools for the game Driver: You Are The Wheelman.) During which I usually browse the internet aimlessly, but I've been coming across some interesting stuff for motivating me. One is the blog for Frictional Games. Looking through it there is a lot of good insight into what the purpose of games are, and what direction gaming is headed in along with how Frictional Games makes their games. It's a lot more interesting than I can describe (if you like such discussions), so look around and see for yourself. One other thing I found was a video by Stephen Fry, called What I Wish I'd Known at 18. It's long, but was worth watching.

Perhaps one day this blog will find a purpose and become more refined, but for today it's just some ramblings of mine.